The Cord of Life

Alus is a man from a nomadic background who makes electronic music. He takes his mother, who has Alzheimer’s, back to the grassland and spends her last time there with her. The mother is looking for the place where her own childhood happened; the son looks for it with her. The film does not tell the illness as a list of losses; it shows what remembering holds on to. The openness of the grassland and the narrowing of memory stand in the same frame. Music has a place of its own in the film, and the son tries to tie his own sound to his mother’s world. Care becoming more than an obligation stands at the centre. Yider and Badema appear in Qiao Sixue’s ninety six minute Chinese film, completed in 2023.