Another Year

又一年

2016 | Documentary | 181 min | Color | Hubei Dialect | China | Trailer

director & editor: SHENGZE ZHU | producer: ZHENGFAN YANG & SHENGZE ZHU | cinematographer: ZHENGFAN YANG | sound mix: DEJIAN OU

SYNOPSIS

13 dinners of a three-generation Chinese migrant worker’s family over the course of 14 months. The meals unfold in real-time through static, long takes, revealing the rhythm of a family’s life on the fringes of urban society. Attention is paid to the dramatic, such as the grandma's stroke, as well as the trivial, like a new pair of eyeglasses. Incessant economic pressures are presented at the dinner table as tangibly as the steamed pork and bowls of congee. With rigorous formal constrains, the film captures nuanced changes within the family and the space over time. It explores how life is shaped by seemingly insignificant events and subtle moments, highlighting the cumulative power of mundane happenings. Through following a migrant worker’s family who left their ancestral home in the countryside to seek a better life in the city, Another Year sheds light on China’s economic boom and massive urbanization.