UK Premiere
A Soil A Culture A River A People 又见炊烟
Year of Production 2025
Production Countries/Regions Germany Belgium China
Duration 15 mins
Genres Drama Fantasy
Dialogue Language(s) Mandarin English German Tagalog
Subtitle Language(s) English
Director(s) Viv Li
Director’s Bio
Viv Li is a Chinese filmmaker based in Berlin. Her film Across The Waters was nominated for the Short Film Palme d’Or at the 77th Cannes Film Festival and won the Lights On Women’s Worth Award. Her recent short, A Soil A Culture A River A People competed for the Orrizonti Best Short Film Award at the 82nd Venice Film Festival. Her short documentary I Don't Feel At Home Anywhere Anymore received a Jury Special Mention at IDFA 2020. Viv is currently working on her feature debut supported by Sundance Institute, Berlinale Talents and Chicken&Egg pictures.
Synopsis
In a dystopian future where borders between countries are indefinitely closed, a replica of Hannover becomes the only way to experience Western culture. Citizen Yu roams around this nostalgic yet eerie town built by the memories of the past. What does he really see?
Festivals & Awards
2025 82nd Venice Film Festival Horizons Section Award - Best Short Film Nomination
Scriptwriter(s)
Viv Li
Producer(s)
Julian Schwandner, Marc Goyens, Carlotta Cornehl
Executive Producer(s)
Key Casts
Zezhi Long
Curators’ note
Director’s Statement
My earliest encounters with western culture is at Beijing World Park, which houses miniatures of famous global landmarks. It showed me the world without traveling. Isn’t that the future? 30 years later, I learnt about Hannover China, a replica built in celebration of friendship between Hannover and Changde. With local Chinese strolling on the street, European buildings freshly painted, I said to myself, the future has arrived.
Loosely based on my uncle’s trip in Germany in 1990s, I transformed Hannover into a dystopian park that amplifies cultural difference and alienation - to express a pressing fear inside me: Will isolation become normality amidst rising AI technology, boiling political tension and a much divided world after the pandemic? Will eerie theme parks be the only way to see the world? Will the future witness the vanishing of humanity?
