The Tigress of Manchuria

Sue HUANG • 2025

"The Tigress" is a novel written by the Russian writer Николай Байков, who has been active in the Northeast region in multiple identities such as colonizer, scientist, and exile throughout his life. From the Russo-Japanese War to the puppet Manchukuo, he has gone through half a century of history of exploration and colonization, civilization and barbarism. The novel is autobiographical and tells the story of a pair of lovers who sacrifice themselves to the tiger in the mountains. The filming of the film retraces Baikov's route of colonization, scientific research, and exile in the Northeast. Facing geopolitical relics,the unchanging mountains, rivers, and forests, and today's biological activities, these multiple realities are organized together to reconstruct Baikov's story: a story about a self-proclaimed civilized conqueror whose fantasy collapsed and gave birth to a crazy impulse to sacrifice nature.