THE LAST YEAR OF DARKNESS | WU YE CHU ZOU

CHINA, USA | 2023 | COLOR | DCP | 92’ | MANDARIN

Chengdu. A big city in China, twice the population of Greece. Among the concrete modernization and the tireless excavators, a hole-in-the-wall shop, Funky Town, home to a generation of ravers, skaters, queers, dj’s, drag queens. With a camera vérité, subtly intrusive and determinably penetrative, without over explaining and patronizing, Mullinkosson’s documentary captures a world forgotten by development, a world of brightness and depression, pleasure and decadence that drew the small straw, yet has turned the knife to itself. Full of self-criticism and with the precision of a reflection, philosophical and compassionate, this is a progressive documentary which does not fail to point out that people forced to the fringes never stop being human, at least as human as those observing them. I.D.

DIRECTOR: Benjamin Mullinkosson
DoP: Gena Baranov, Yanqiu Fei
EDITOR: Bobby Moser

BENJAMIN MULLINKOSSON
American documentarist, who grew up in suburban Chicago, studying observational documentary. For more than 10 years he shared his time between Los Angeles and Shanghai, working in documentary and advertising. This film took 4 years to complete. With his previous work (‘Don’t Be a Dick About It’, 2018) he won the Audience Award at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. 

FILMOGRAPHY
2023 The Last Year of Darkness
2018 Don’t Be a Dick About It