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Ferry Chronicles: The He Family

Guo Xizhi

Release year: 2019

Run time: 234 mins

Film type: Documentary

Synopsis

At the end of the 1990s, between 40 to 50 million industrial workers were laid off in China, impacting millions of families. He Guoping’s family was one of them. After being laid off, his wife opened a hostel. He became a “housekeeper”, cooking every day, and his son He Huan grew up with naughty children. The result of twenty years of tracking and filming the He family, this movie has the temporal feel of "watching grass grow". Some people have even called it a "civilian epic".

 

Director biography

Guo Xizhi, born in 1965, in Tongling, Anhui Province, graduated from the Chinese Department of East China Normal University in 1990 with a Masters degree in literature and art. He has published several articles in journals such as Reading. He has worked in a TV station and now teaches at Shenzhen University. His works have been screened often in international and domestic film festivals, and won some awards, as have the student films he directed.