'Alcarràs' in China?

When M. Night Shyamalan, president of the jury for the 2022 edition of the Berlinale, awarded the Golden Bear to Alcarràs by Carla Simón, said that the reasons for this award were the "extraordinary performances, from children to actors over eighty years old", and also their "skilled at sensitively portraying a family and their connection and dependence on the land". Well, then these two arguments could perfectly apply, without changing a single comma, to Living the land, the Silver Bear for Best Director for Huo Meng in 2025, also at the Berlinale.

Ambitious yet simple film about the tensions between rural traditions and socioeconomic changes, Living the land talks about growing up in the countryside, pacing life to the cyclical transformations of the land, not to the convulsions caused by the impact of modernization. Morning-noon-afternoon-evening-night. Spring-summer-autumn-winter. These unmovable cycles, which always start again once they end, humanity has followed to the letter for centuries. And the almost anthropological changes that arrive suddenly must be integrated within these patterns, not replace them. Because, moreover, they are beautiful. Huo Meng films the seasonal transitions of the world so well that, when he contemplates men and women, children and elders working the land in a general shot, nothing is missing or superfluous in that image. It is beautiful because it is essential and it is essential because it is beautiful.