A River Runs, Turns, Erases, Replaces

Chinese director Shengze Zhu, the author of  Another Year (LLL 17th NH) and awarded the Rotterdam  Tiger -  Present.Perfect. (Discoveries 19th NH), once again talks about her native Wuhan, this time from the perspective of the Yangtze River flowing through the city and the coronavirus pandemic. She creates an urban symphony, similar to those of the 20th century, but using her own long, carefully composed, static shots. British critic Erika Balsom wrote about her formal discipline , In the face of myriad forms of disappearance, Shengze Zhu hoards traces of what others might deem not worth keeping. Her pared-down style enables stray details to command attention, shattering preconceptions and resensitizing perception. The director begins her film with shots from the city surveillance cameras from April 2020. Then it goes back in time, presenting the shots recorded in Wuhan in 2016-2019. The frame is dominated by wide panoramas, against which you can see small human silhouettes remaining in motion. Oscillating between what is individual and what is collective, Shengze Zhu quotes letters to the victims of the pandemic written by their loved ones. The film, avoiding the pathos that often accompanies attempts to capture transience, becomes an elegy appropriate to our times.