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The First Line of China

Haunted by post-socialist nostalgia, 25-year-old director Hanwen Zhang returns to the cement-factory town in northeast China in which he was born and raised. The town’s official name is Sheep Pen Town, in the Shuangyang District of Changchun City, Jilin Province. People don’t really use this name, but currently refer to it as ‘the cement factory’. According to oral history, the town was known in the 1990s as ‘the first line of China’. Throughout the film, the director explores this clue to reveal a half-buried story. The town was a product of China’s rapid and radical industrialisation in the 1980s, having been constructed simultaneously with a state-owned cement factory to house the workers who migrated there. With a subtle irony and a nuanced but brave approach, Hanwen explores the history of his country and its ideology through the lenses of his own family and hometown.

The First Line of China

NR 2019
The Legend Of Shangri-La

CG Animation Short Film "The Legend of Shangri-la" is adapted from the poem of the same title by the famous poet Tao Yuan Ming of Dong Jin Dynasty over 1000 years ago. By applying Chinese traditional painting techniques and papercutting to CG, IDMT created this unique animation film with the style and movement of Shan-Xi shadow puppet show. The combination results in this original 3D CG short film with its unique visual style. It tranquilly depicts Peach Blossom Valley (known to the western culture as Shangri-La), the earthly paradise, in Dong Jin people's mind and their desire to return to happy and harmonic life.

The Legend Of Shangri-La

6.2 2006
Y/Our Music

Y/OUR MUSIC immerses itself in the world of Thai music, from traditional music to labor songs and classical pop to urban indie music, spanning different locales and generations. As nine musicians each display their music, the rural or urban environments that influenced their sound are explored. The hands that play traditional instruments amid the red dust clouds, the labor songs being hummed in front of grains awaiting harvest, and the indie music born out of concrete basements create a melodious ecosystem. While they inhabit different musical worlds the musicians are connected by the same passion to bring their artistic aspirations to the fore and survive in the outskirts of the mainstream.

Y/Our Music

NR 2014
The Lucky One

Initially the story of an HIV+ woman who was “not afraid of dying”, the question arose during editing as to whether the film’s subject, Zhang Xi, was telling the “truth” with regard to her own story, or fabricating it. Eventually, the film became less about the “reality” of Zhang’s life, and more about her own narration of it: she decides the story, the cast, the arrangement of dramatic events. No longer faced with questions of truth or falsehood, we instead follow Zhang Xi’s exploration of her own suppressed or as-yet-unsatisfied desires.

The Lucky One

NR 2011
Not One Less

The documentary “Not One Less” records the clash in Hong Kong Island on 31st August, 2019, and the assembly on Mid-Autumn festival night supporting protestors in custody. The protests initiated by the "Extradition Bill" has continued for more than 100 days. In this period, over 1000 citizens were arrested, a number of people committed suicide, and there are rumors that some protestors are missing. In the clash scene, protestors strive to protect their comrades from being isolated. After the clash, they still care about their comrades in custody. On the mid-autumn festival night, they sang loudly outside the Lai Chi Kok Reception Centre, to let their comrades know that they were not abandoned.

Not One Less

6.0 2020
Land of My Father

Byeong-man, a farmer whose father was enslaved during Japan's occupation of Korea, protests the Japanese government's claim over the disputed island territory of Dokdo. Kyeong Sook, a woman who lived on Dokdo with her father, struggles to keep his legacy alive after the Korean government mysteriously erased their history. Set in the unresolved trauma of the Japanese occupation of Korea, Land of My Father (아버지의 땅) is a story about two lives that are intertwined with a remote disputed island.

Land of My Father

NR 2020
We Were There

Mt. Gasherbrum IV in the Himalaya is famous for the "shining wall," the west face that has tempted many climbers. In 1997, the Korean team led by Cho Sung-dae and Yoo Hak-jae successfully developed a new route through the wall to the summit, where only two teams in history have been at the top. They couldn't get sponsors for their expedition and lost most of the equipment and food because of avalanches, but they managed to do what seemed impossible. The route was named 'Korean Direct,' and officially documented in the American Alpine Journal. The documentary shows us what happened in Himalaya 16 years ago, using dozens of videotapes shot by the team. It also includes interviews of the group, currently living a life distant from climbing the mountain. Why did everybody forget the most significant achievement in Korean mountain climbing history?

We Were There

NR 2013
Alone Again in Fukushima

“Alone Again is Fukushima” is the long-awaited sequel to "Alone in Fukushima" (2015), which followed Naoto Matsumura, a man who remained in the nuclear zone in Fukushima to tend animals. The film has followed Naoto for nearly a decade and portrays how Naoto and the animals survived the residents' return to the town, Tokyo Olympics, and COVID-19. In the course of 10 years, many animals and humans were born and died. But Naoto remained in the town and took care of the animals. He raised chickens and kept bees in order to survive. In 2017, Tomioka became the place where people can come back to live, however most young people didn’t return. There is no end in sight for the nuclear crisis in Fukushima. The contaminated water is overflowing and will be pumped out to the ocean soon. Meanwhile the government is trying to restart the nuclear reactors all over the country. The film will give us a chance to reflect on this situation by looking at how Naoto and animals survive in Fukushima.

Alone Again in Fukushima

NR 2023
Friends of Minamata Victims - Video Diary

Created for the first Japanese exhibition dedicated to video art, Video Communication: Do-It-Yourself-Kit, this work documents protests outside the Chisso Corporation headquarters in central Tokyo. Hazardous byproducts from the company’s chemical plants had caused severe mercury poisoning—and, consequently, a neurological disease—in Minamata’s livestock and inhabitants. Nakaya filmed the sit-in with a handheld video camera and installed a battery-powered television monitor on-site, allowing the demonstrators to watch themselves by playing back the recordings of their actions.

Friends of Minamata Victims - Video Diary

NR 1972
Ballad of Roaming Spirits

Since his wife left him, Jun has been a wandering soul who wonders what purpose all his suffering serves. In a simple farming village surrounded by barren hills, he takes care of a small temple. He looks at his hands: his right is blessed, and his left is deformed. He believes he has healing abilities and goes from house to house to help the sick. As the seasons pass, this gently-paced portrait of the wandering Jun is interwoven with impressions of village life, with its rituals and festivals, and poverty that makes many people desperate, and some defiant. Two sheep, destined to be sacrificed, add a grimly poetic note to this uncompromising and moving meditation on fate and the search for meaning. The body cam worn by one of the sheep also makes for some surprising shots. Meanwhile, Jun’s musings gradually reveal more about the crises he has had to endure and the reason for his self-sacrifice.

Ballad of Roaming Spirits

NR 2019
Discovering Xizang 2026

This short documentary flim was shooted in January 2026. It showcases the latest experiences in Xizang, China, of nine youth from six countries across four continents: Nepal, the United States, Russia, Italy, Morocco, and Cambodia. The film highlights the nine young people's visits to cultural heritage preservation sites like the Potala Palace and Jokhang Temple, the development of photovoltaic power stations and green new energy, modern residential architecture and agriculture, ecological conservation efforts for snow-capped mountains, glaciers, and plateau lakes, high-speed rail and expressways, the transmission of intangible cultural heritage, and the ordinary yet fulfilling modern lives of everyday people.

Discovering Xizang 2026

NR 2026
My Class

Byung-ye and Dohyun are second-year mechanical students in the skills program at Busan Technical High School. They devote themselves to practice day and night, determined to win a medal at the National Skills Competition — because only then do they even stand a chance of applying to a major corporation. Will they achieve the result they’ve been working toward? And if not, what choices will be left to them? In a classroom that resembles a factory, anxious yet hopeful days go by.

My Class

NR 2025
Forgotten Loyalty

The war history and family life of Nong Jianzhong, a Zhuang Vietnam War veteran, have exposed a lot of absurd political lies. The emperor's new clothes will eventually be revealed to be a farce. The lonely sail has landed and is independent. Everything is empty. The grandson represents the future, the old man represents the past, and the lies of authoritarianism have persisted across generations and have not disappeared. He was full of revolutionary feelings, nostalgic for the past, and recited revolutionary songs. However, after demobilization and return to his hometown, he was "oppressed by revolutionary comrades" due to the family planning policy. Some anti-party elements transformed into revolutionaries and occupied high positions. And the vast number of ordinary combatants he represents have been forgotten by the country, society, and families. He is contradictory and tangled. He recognizes the Communist Party but is dissatisfied with the Communist Party.

Forgotten Loyalty

NR 2021
The Inspired Island: River Without Banks

River Without Banks (2014) takes poetry and war as its main theme. As homage to Death of a Stone Cell, the film is structured into ten segments; each led by the first lines of the first ten stanza of the poem. Correspondences between the poet and his friends are incorporated throughout, taking the audience back and forth between Lofu's youth and middle age, only to eventually depict a full picture of the protagonist. The camera follows Lofu on his trips back to the bomb shelter and tunnel in Kinmen and his hometown Hengyang in Hunan Province of China, while also capturing his daily life in his adopted country of Canada. Acclaimed as the "Wizard of Poetry", Lofu shares through the film of the most insightful reflections.

The Inspired Island: River Without Banks

NR 2014