By Yun-hua Chen.
The film records the solitude of childhood and shows the power of poetry within that solitude.”
Black and white, left-behind children, rural China – Director Chen Deming, in Always, uses a familiar formula to bring out a unique layer of poetry and coming-of-age. The Chinese title, Cong Lai, carries different meanings depending on contexts: “have always been,” “have never been,” “coming from,” and “always.” It is a metaphor for the film, which blends timelines and memories through the thread of poetry. Set in Hunan’s remote mountains, the main protagonist Gong Youbin’s past and present are interwoven, as he grows up from a child writing poetry in class to a taciturn adult. In an isolated place with a strong sense of loneliness, the film observes, follows, keeps him company without judgment. Always immerses itself in dailiness and lives in the moment. It is, at the same time, an ode to life and the passage of time.
Always was screened at the Vienna International Film Festival, where Film International had the pleasure of speaking with the director about his filmmaking and poetry in life.
How did you first come across this village and this family? Did you know the place first or the people first? Did you know these children before discovering their poetry class, or was it the class that led you to them? What drew you to their world — the rhythms of their daily life, their words, or something more intangible?
I had known the teacher in the film for many years. By chance, I came across the children’s poems on social media, and their tender strokes and innocent imagination moved me instantly. The world they described stood in stark contrast to the reality around them, and in that moment I felt a profound emotional connection — and the desire to travel to that place. I wanted to follow these children’s growth, to see how they confronted the pressures of life and the fading of their dreams, and to explore where the poetry in everyday life comes from. Later, I realized how closely their childhood paths resembled my own, which led me to use poetry as an entry point to make a film about these children and this land. It also became a way for me to look back at my own childhood and hometown.
The ellipsis in the film creates a striking cinematic experience. We perceive the passing of time through Gong’s changing appearance — his body almost becomes a temporal marker in this longitudinal study. Could you tell us about the timeline of the shoot, and how you conceived of cinematic time in relation to lived time?
Filming began in 2018 and the main shoot was largely completed by early 2023. I have always been preoccupied with the idea of time — something elusive and intangible, a human invention. Lived time is the length of a life, yet different emotional experiences expand or contract our sense of that length. Cinematic time, meanwhile, is shaped by the way you choose to look. I wanted viewers to feel the flow of emotion through the act of looking at the frame, at the scene, rather than simply following events. In the film, the changes in Gong’s appearance become a visible marker of time passing.
Where did you live while filming, and how much time did you spend with them during each visit? Your camera seems to move among them almost like another child — curious, observant, never intrusive. How did you negotiate the balance between intimacy and distance, between empathy and observation when filming?
During filming, I stayed there for about a week each time, living with the children and their families. The mountain roads were long, and each trip felt like a journey in itself. When he was a child, the protagonist talked to me often because he was lonely. As he grew older, he barely spoke to me, and only then did I understand the depth of his solitude. It drew me closer to the emotional core of the film. Maintaining a sense of distance in the frame was both an emotional expression and a visual challenge. I had to abandon my earlier methods of cinematography; on set, there was no room for hesitation — only precise decisions.
How did you choose which poems to include in the film, and what role did the poetry teacher play in shaping the process of selection?
Poetry occupies a soul-like place in the film. The teacher gave them themes, and the children imagined freely. When editing, my criteria were no longer artistic merit but emotional unity. I selected ten poems for the film, and each one subtly echoes the images. Without the poetry, the visuals and story would still hold, but the emotional rhythm would be lost. The poems are the children’s voices, their language, and the tool through which I sense their inner worlds.
Why did you decide to shoot in black and white? Was it a way to strip the world down to essentials, to focus on texture and emotion, or did it come from another impulse?
For this film, black and white represents purity and a sense of the sacred; it also symbolizes, in a way, the singularity of childhood time. I had conceived this visual language from the very beginning. I wanted to make a simple film, and black-and-white images helped me shut out external noise. The film’s language grew out of the language of poetry. I used fixed shots. Through this visual language, I hoped to create an emotional resonance with the audience, allowing them to immerse themselves in the film’s rhythm and atmosphere. I was searching for a pure experience of looking.
In your films, nature seems to occupy as much emotional space as your human subjects. How do you see the relationship between landscape and the people who inhabit it?
All human beings are the same in that we try to locate ourselves in time. If you look at little Gong, the other children, the school, the landscape, and all the people within a single frame, and then pull the camera further and further back until everything disappears into a single beam of light merging with the universe, the moment makes you question whether any of it ever existed at all. We all age and die, like the dying moth in the film being eaten by ants. I want my documentary to record the fleeting moments that move a child. I am preserving everything through physical means.
Poetry occupies a soul-like place in the film. The teacher gave them themes, and the children imagined freely. When editing, my criteria were no longer artistic merit but emotional unity. I selected ten poems for the film, and each one subtly echoes the images.”
I love the multiple connotations of your Chinese title. “Cong Lai” can mean always or never, depending on the grammatical structure — and it can also mean “the place one comes from.” There is a sense of a time-space continuum in the phrase, which the film beautifully echoes. At what point did you decide that this would be your title, and what did it mean to you personally?
The title Cong Lai comes from a poem written by the children. Early in the editing process, I decided to use it. The poem contains a sense of ambiguity and the unspoken, ambivalent, yet on the verge of speaking but holding back — like a description of life, or like a child letting out a soft sigh on a quiet afternoon when they see a landscape. An artist friend later reminded me that it also has a Buddhist resonance: “Cong Lai” in Buddhist texts is translated from Sanskrit terms such as ādi-kālikam, anādi, or svabhāva, referring to an original state beyond time — something that is as it always was, unborn and undying. For me, it also signals a return to childhood and to the origins of life.
The film captures a profound solitude in childhood, and the power of poetry in this solitude — did it remind you of your own childhood, or of something universal about growing up in silence?
The film records the solitude of childhood and shows the power of poetry within that solitude. It reminded me of my own childhood: my parents were not around, and I grew up moving between various relatives’ homes, longing to wander. That childhood, full of uncertainty, shaped my thinking and creativity. We often assume childhood ends gradually, but sometimes it ends in an instant — and this film attempts to capture that instant. Perhaps it will make viewers remember forgotten dreams; perhaps it will make them realize that certain things never truly disappear, but exist in another form. I hope the film not only evokes people’s childhoods, but also prompts reflection on life, time and loss. A film is not simply a story — it is an emotional experience in which viewers seek their own projections. How do we understand growing up? When we look back, can we recover what was once precious?
I love how your film is moment-driven rather than event-driven — it resists cliché and offers a different approach from many films about left-behind children in China. How did your approach to editing shape this rhythm? Was it a process of discovery, of listening to the material until it spoke for itself?
This is something I learned while making this film. A French mentor once told me that to become a great director, one must listen, read, travel, listen to music — to feel life. Only then can you maintain a fresh pair of eyes capable of discovering it. During editing, she told me that a film’s rhythm should flow and breathe like music. Every shift in rhythm carries emotional movement. This insight deeply shaped the way I edited, and it allowed me greater freedom in expressing emotion throughout the creative process.
Documenting real lives always involves questions of ethics and representation. How did you navigate the responsibility of portraying this family and community, especially when dealing with moments of vulnerability in childhood?
I want to emphasize again that reality does not truly exist. “Reality” is a private feeling, and sometimes documentaries capture the illusion of what feels real. For me, making a film is a journey inward — a chance to understand ourselves better, and to see a neglected facet of the world through the lens. Reality is a feeling, and that feeling can be created through the language of film. I also believe that documentary is a second layer of creation built upon facts. Regarding your question: as a director, the greatest kindness I can offer is to draw close to them, to understand them, and to do so without any judgment.
Have Gong and his family seen your film already?
No, not yet. I hope I will have the chance to show it to them in person.
Your work sits somewhere between documentary and poetry, observation and participation. Do you see yourself continuing to explore this in-between space — or do you feel drawn toward new cinematic forms after Always?
I am working on a new film. I find filmmaking endlessly fascinating — it is a continual act of translating oneself, of translating one’s inner world through cinema, until one reaches the true end. Each film takes you a little closer. The kind of film you make, and the kind you are capable of making, are both rooted in instinct. They come from what truly belongs to you. I cannot make the type of film others think is good if I feel nothing for it. I used to think cinema was a tool for exploring the self; now I feel it is an offering to the divine. All human actions exist to affirm the meaning of our existence. Science does this, and so does art. Through many different means, we express the limits and creativity of being human; we celebrate the beauty of life and praise the Creator who made us. It is as if we are saying: you created me, and I created this. In doing so, we celebrate their greatness.
Yun-hua Chen is an independent film scholar and critic and associate editor of Film International Online. Currently, she serves on the board of the German Film Critics Association.