Another Year

The film captures 13 dinners of a migrant worker’s family over the course of 14 months.The meals unfold in real-time through 13 static, long takes, highlighting how the mundane could appear mysterious and beautiful with the passage of time. A series of random occurrences, some dramatic and some trivial, are all given meaning by theirproximity to each other. The joys and frustrations of the three-generation family, as well as the changes they experienced over the year and the things they cannot change, are presented and analyzed with remarkable details. Through examining the lives of migrant workers, who left their ancestral homeland in rural areas to seek a better life in cities but remain trapped at the margins of urban society, the film aims to craft a meditation on China’s economic boom and massive urbanization.