All Ears

Wen Shan is an ordinary screenwriter trying to make a living in Beijing. His commercial jobs are left half done and his own stories never get written; in a city growing fast he stands still. By chance he begins writing eulogies. He goes to the families of the dead, listens, looks carefully, and at last puts it on paper. While rebuilding the lives of others he finds his own place too, and sees that ordinary people can stand at the centre of an account. The film uses death not as drama but as a way of telling a life, and moves at a slow pace. Hu Ge plays the lead in Liu Jiayin’s hundred and nineteen minute Chinese film, completed in 2023.