I Don’t Feel At Home Anywhere Anymore

I Don’t Feel At Home Anywhere Anymore

Viv Li • 2021

Duration: 00:15:54
Language:
Subtitles: Chinese, English
Country/Region: Belgium,Mainland China

Thirty-year-old Viv Li is studying art in Belgium and hasn’t lived in her native China for ten years. During the Christmas holidays, she pays a nine-day visit to her family in Beijing, where it soon becomes clear how uprooted she has become by her life abroad. Losing your roots is a painful process, Li shows, though it has its humorous moments. In brief, this wistful but witty account of a trip to Beijing portrays the discomfort of the bird that has flown returns to the nest.

AWARDS & FESTIVALS

2020 International Documentary Festival Amsterdam, Netherlands2021 Leuven International Short Film Festival, Belgium

CAST & CREW

DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT

Viv Li

Viv Li

Director

This short film was made right before the pandemic hit the world in early 2020. Whenever I screen this film and look back at this moment, I found it ironic that I was feeling so lonely and alienated at my own home town. Little did I know that I would be separated from them for the next two years, and still counting. Little did I know that the world would all feel a kind of isolation that we are more helpless of.I wonder, if I knew this, would I have behaved differently?I gave up on the subtitles because I want to create an intimate experience for the audience just as they are in the rooms with me. Subtitling word by word sometimes makes a film flat, and leaves less space for imagination. I hope the audience could enjoy searching for clues in the image, rather than in the words. And also, enjoyed seeing all the Chinese food we ate.There are 50 million overseas Chinese in the world. The choice of studying abroad and settling abroad have been considered a proud extension of one’s life in Chinese society. However, after adjusting to a foreign life, coming back homehas always been a strange and weighty process, especially as an artist, a single female and a 30-year-old.My strange relationship with a Chinese home is often shared with people in many different cultures. And that didn’t surprise me. Globalisation made us floating, rootless and free, but we should always remember, there’s one thing, home will always remain very good at:Only there, we can be a complete loser and it will still be okay.

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