《Returning home after a long journey》Recommended: Four years of filming the life of a young man returning home

The 5th Chinese Documentary Film Conference’s Recommendation Ceremony and Closing Ceremony was recently held at the Guangzhou Grand Theater. Six works, including the realistic documentary film Returning Home after a Long Journey, were recommended and permanently collected by the National Image Collection Project.This film was directed by young director Zheng Xusong, with Crown Prince, Dong Aihui, and Chi Qingbo serving as producers. The film crew spent four years with an ordinary family in Baisha Town, Jiangjin, Chongqing, recording the life of Pan Zhaode, a young man who returned home, between working, taking care of his elders, and raising his daughter.

After Pan Zhaode returned to his hometown, he started working in a winery. Income, family responsibilities and career changes all weighed on his schedule.The camera follows him to and from get off work, and also enters scenes of his hospital bed, dining table, and the growth of his children.Life does not have a prearranged climax, but difficulties will suddenly come on an ordinary day: the job position changes, the illness of the elder needs to be taken care of, and the children are growing up.Every interaction between the characters constitutes the real plot of the film.

《Returning home after a long journey》There is no narration or lines written for the characters.The director does not actively interfere in life and lets events happen according to their original rhythm.This method requires a longer wait and requires the photographer and the subject to establish stable trust.Many important moments cannot be reserved. Only by the continuous presence of the camera can it record the emotions revealed by a person in silence, busyness or short rest.

The film captures labor as concrete actions.The processes in the winery, the living arrangements after returning home, and the trivial matters of taking care of family members all accumulate strength through repetition.Pan Zhaode is not portrayed as a legendary figure who transcends daily life. He will get tired and encounter problems that cannot be solved immediately.Because of this, the audience can recognize in his situation the pressures shared by many ordinary families: work supports life, and families constantly redefine the meaning of work.

The conference recommendation mentioned that the film allows workers to be seen, and also allows the tenacity and dignity of ordinary days to be expressed on the screen.Looking straight up - returning home after a long journey - is an important creative attitude.The camera does not draw conclusions for the characters, nor does it dictate with dense exposition the moments when the audience should be moved.How the characters face loss and continue to live are all presented by action and time.

Baisha Town is not only the place where the story takes place, but also the background of the relationship between the characters.Returning home means returning to familiar streets, people, and family networks, and it also means facing local employment and life choices again.The film starts from one person's experience of returning to his hometown and touches on population mobility, intergenerational care and youth survival in villages and towns.The changes of the great era do not enter the picture with slogans. They fall on the practical issues of whether a job is stable, who will take care of an elderly person, and how a child will grow up.

Prior to this conference, - Returning from the Road - had won the St. George Award for Best Documentary in the Documentary Competition of the 48th Moscow International Film Festival and the Sharp Eyes Award from the International Federation of Film Clubs, and was shortlisted for the Pingyao International Film Festival, Beijing International Film Festival and other festivals.Audiences from different regions can understand Pan Zhaode's life, which shows that labor, family and responsibility have commonalities across regions.Specific Chinese local experiences can also be connected to world audiences through a believable character.

Being permanently collected adds another layer of temporal significance to this four-year image.Watched today, it records how a young man who returned to his hometown overcame the current difficulties; watched many years later, the film will still retain the details of rural life, family structure and labor methods during this period.《Returning home after a long journey》The continuous filming proves that there is no shortage of stories in ordinary life, and real life worth waiting for has its own value in the big screen and video archives.