Synopsis

The fifth documentary in Zhang Mengqi's Self-portrait series, "Self-portrait: Dying at 47 KM," is a search for the meaning of death in the aftermath of the filmmaker's grandfather's death. Zhang Mengqi's Self-portraits are all shot in 47 KM, her ancestral village 47 kilometers from her family's home in Suizhou, Hubei province. "My grandfather has passed away, and what does the village mean to me without him?" she writes about the making of the fifth documentary in the series, and continues, "I started to search for stories about death in the village: some are of unnatural causes, some are bizarre, and some are results of hatred. In the daily life accompanied by so many deaths, how should I understand death?"