ALWAYS | 从来

USA, FRANCE, CHINA, TAIWAN|  2025 | DCP | 87’ | MANDARIN

DIRECTOR: Deming Chen
DoP: Deming Chen
EDITOR: I-Chu Lin

One of the most beautiful film debuts in recent memory, by the consistently exciting world of Documentary, this lyrical film captures the reality of an eight-year-old boy who, after being abandoned by his mother, grows up with his grandparents in an isolated mountain village in China, with poetry as his only solace. The film patiently captures the rural, ascetic daily life of the poor family over the subtle course of several years, often interspersing the beautiful and melancholic poems written by the boy and his classmates in their small school class. Through these poems, and this gorgeous film by the Chinese-born director, a hasty adulthood, the perception of time passing relentlessly, the earth that keeps people close to it, defying every spiritual calling and inner need, and the portrayal of a life so distant from our own, become motifs expressed magnificently. L.K.

DEMING CHEN

Born in 1993 in Hunan, a city in southern China, Deming Chen pursued a sports-study program while studying himself photography during high school. During his university studies, he enrolled in an art school to study photography in greater depth and began organizing exhibitions of his photographs around the world. In 2018, he continued his education at the Li Xianting Film School, the birthplace of Chinese independent cinema, before moving into filmmaking. In 2016, he began directing films, short docs and short fiction.

FILMOGRAPHY
2025 Always