Eternal Spring

長春

Canada, 2022, 86' 

A breath-taking long take shows the police sweeping a Chinese town. The film’s incipit is based on the drawings – animated in 3-D – of Daxiong, a Chinese artist who moved to the US. The scene is an actual police operation conducted in 2002 to arrest the followers of the religious movement Falun Gong. Some time earlier, the group had managed to hack the Chinese State TV, broadcasting a message against the persecution of Falun Gong members on the part of the government. Some were to be arrested and die in jail; others managed to flee and expatriate.

Reconstructing facts, combining interviews and animation, Eternal Spring relies on Daxiong as an intercessory character who travels in search of the survivors in order to give shape to and show something that has no visible testimonies but only memories that come to life thanks to drawing and animation. This film explores the limit of representation and the need for witnesses in front of any event of censorship and violence. An Oscar nominee for Canada, the film opens up new dimensions for depicting the real in its freest, most responsible, and imaginative form.