As the second child at the time of the one-child policy, the filmmaker travels back to China. Can the disrupted relationship with his parents, who made a huge sacrifice, be restored? Can the past finally be reconciled with?
In the Directors’ Forum competition, pioneering Dutch auteur films compete that have one thing in common: their singularity. Curators of this programme are film journalist and programmer Hugo Emmerzael and screenwriter, director and teacher Beri Shalmashi.
Curators Hugo and Beri about the film: “In his debut, Louis Hothothot returns to China, the country he migrated from seven years ago. As the second child of the family, his birth was illegal, which cost his parents dearly: they had to pay three annual salaries and abandon their political activism. Hothothot feels guilty, we gradually realise, watching this carefully composed film. Before he started editing, he arranged all the images shot by shot in a book.”
