First Edition

The first edition ran its call for entries from 15 January to 5 March 2022, open to Chinese-language filmmakers anywhere in the world, and received 688 films. Six jurors from four countries — France, Serbia, India and China — watched and argued their way to a selection of thirteen.

Arriving at that list was long and painful. Two films about lorry drivers, 《大宋平安》 and Still Walking, and two about individual lives caught in large historical events, 《消失在1946》 and Until a Forest Grows from the Seabed, forced hard choices on the panel. The arguments turned heated and every round of voting was fraught. Leek Comics was the most contested title of all: shortlisted and cut several times over, it was restored only at the last moment.

Even with the list settled, every juror felt something had been lost. They named many films they believed had been overlooked, among them 《阿依谢姆古丽》, 《鞍山日记》, 《不老》, 《独木舟之旅》, 《分家》, 《和爱有关的日子》, 《欢墟》, 《设得兰的黑暗记事》, 《我在家中渐渐消失》 and 《循环的夜》. One juror argued that 《一点点捱》 was the single greatest omission of the preliminary round.

The thirteen included work that had already been noticed internationally: A Day, selected for the short documentary competition at IDFA 2020; Newborn, which won a Special Jury Award in the medium-length and short competition at Visions du Réel 2021; and Until a Forest Grows from the Seabed, awarded the Golden Key for short film at the 38th Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival. Nine of the thirteen were directed by women, two of them co-directed. Miao Teng on Still Walking, Yang Juan on Calling for Work and Liang Jingyuan on Children’s Literature each directed, shot and edited alone. Liu Yuting, born in 2001 and director of Leek Comics, was the youngest filmmaker in the selection.

The final jury was made up of the USC professor and film scholar Stanley Rosen, the Japanese director Kazuhiro Soda, the German curator Sirkka Moller, and Zhao Qi and Jin Huaqing from China; the directors Wang Bing and Zhou Hao served as artistic advisers. The jury decided to create an Extraordinary Award, honouring documentary authors who go their own way and do so with real creative force. It went to Huang Shuli for Will You Look At Me, to Lita for 《寂静之歌》 and to Yang Juan for Calling for Work.

Put forward by the festival, Will You Look At Me and 《寂静之歌》 were selected by the Brussels Millenium Documentary Film Festival and the Vesoul International Film Festival of Asian Cinema respectively — the festival’s first two partner festivals.