Doc/Fest - Sheffield

Ten years in the making, Feng Yan’s candid documentary takes as its subject matter the charismatic wife, mother and sole provider of the film’s title, detailing her plight from 1996, when she and her family are relocated from their home in Guilin village to make way for the mammoth Three Gorges Dam project on the Yangtze River, and following her ongoing battle with local bureaucracy to secure a patch of land on which to build a new home for her and her family to eke out a near subsistence level of existence upon.
Scenes of Bingai locking horns with the local agents of the State for a relocation permit for her chosen plot are interwoven with candid straight-to-camera interviews where the earthy farmer discusses her unsatisfactory arranged marriage to a debilitated husband unable to work due to a crippled leg, her hopes for the future, her attitudes to city living and frank revelations about her series of miscarriages and abortions to fit in with the government’s One-Child Policy. Yan’s film is a touching portrait of the indomitable spirit of the peasant classes left behind in China’s relentless march towards economic progress.