Living the Land
In the village of Bawangtai in 1991, time appears to have stood still. Despite the rapid industrialization happening in cities across China, everyday rural life for farming families in the Henan province remains steadfastly tied to the demands of the land. 10-year-old Xu Chuang, the third-born child of one such family, is unceremoniously left with his wheat farmer uncle when his parents and older siblings set out to find work in the Southern city of Shenzhen. Cared for though unable to shake the feeling he doesn’t belong with the extended Li family, Chuang finds comfort in a young aunt – who feels similarly uneasy as she is pressured to marry – and his surly but kind nonagenarian great-grandmother. Each season rolls into the next, and Chuang learns the quotidian rhythms of the land which they all till, at once bucolic, cruel, cyclical and nourishing.
The Silver Bear winner for Best Director at the 2025 Berlin Film Festival, Chinese filmmaker Huo Meng’s elliptical and elegant sophomore feature proves “a cinema of patience is also a cinema of assurance” (Indiewire). Equal parts coming-of-age tale and epic portrait of provincial life, Living the Land exists at an apex for Chinese culture in the 1990s, “a time when major reforms were transforming China from a nation of rural laborers into the industrial powerhouse it is today,” (The Hollywood Reporter).
Cast
- Wang Shang
- Zhang Yanrong
- Zhang Chuwen
- "There’s a patient, plainspoken poetry... to “Living the Land,” a rolling rural drama that... feels wholly, organically observed, as if its storytelling were dictated by the rigors and challenges of seasons and soil. [I]mpressive."
- "From its very first scene... we know we’re in the hands of a skillful filmmaker. [A] richly detailed fresco reminiscent of a classic pastoral novel — think Thomas Hardy, Willa Cather or D.H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers — where life’s many hardships come and go with each new season, and where technology arrives without warning to change things forever."
- "[D]eeply poignant yet staunchly unsentimental... beautifully crafted...."
- "Huo Meng’s extraordinary second feature about countryside and country on the precipice of change... [is] extremely handsome and involving...."
- "[A] rich, warm portrait... Huo’s lovely roving eye for composition and gentle hand with drama trace the challenges and enduring bonds among several hard-working generations of farmers."
- "Told with an almost documentary realism, these small, interlaced stories are ordinary in themselves yet add up to something that feels grander, like an ultimate reflection on a disappearing way of life."
- "Throughout the entirety of this powerful drama, Meng weaves a finely tuned tableau of unconventional characters and challenging relationships that consistently refuse to adhere to expectations. [T]hose who allow themselves to fall gradually into Meng’s tactile portrayal of life in rural China will be quickly rewarded."
- "Epic in scope and yet intimate in its storytelling... a gorgeous-looking sprawling saga.... A simple masterpiece of Chinese filmmaking."
- "Huo’s second feature is a visually captivating, studiously structured and ceaselessly humane account of the anguish, anxiety and agitation sweeping rural China on the cusp of the country’s turbocharged plunge into market economics."
Gallery
Awards & Recognition
Silver Bear - Best Director
Berlin Int'l. Film Festival
Golden Bear - Best Film
Berlin Int'l. Film Festival
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