The Yunnan Documentary Film Festival (Yunfest), founded in 2003, is one of China’s earliest and most influential public-interest documentary biennials, usually held in Kunming each spring. Through competition, youth, screening, retrospective, and community sections, it has brought Chinese independent documentary to wider audiences and served as an important launch point for many auteur works onto the international stage.

From 2003 to 2011, Yunfest held five editions, each subtitled with a traditional Chinese solar term, continuously discovering and presenting Chinese-language documentary work grounded in lived reality. This selection gathers CathayPlay titles that were screened or awarded at the festival, tracing the long relationship between this distinctive documentary platform and Chinese independent cinema.