Child Is Father to the Man is a feature-leangth personal documentary that traces the collapse of a once higher-middle-class Chinese family, set against the backdrop of post-pandemic economic decline.
After years abroad, a Chinese filmmaker returns to Shenzhen to find his childhood home facing demolition and his parents secretly divorced, yet still living together in uneasy silence. Unable to confront them directly, he stages a performative reckoning: inviting each parent to a seaside apartment and asking them to reenact who they might have become without marriage’s constraints. Blending vérité, staged performance, and family archives, Child Is Father to the Man becomes a protest against the weight of familial duty and patriarchal history, and a longing to rewrite what love, kinship, and freedom could mean.
Producer - Sol Ye
Sol Ye is a Shanghai-based independent producer dedicated to bringing the most original, boundary-pushing Asian stories to the international audience. Her newest narrative short ACROSS THE WATERS was nominated for the Palme d’Or in the 2024 Cannes Short Films Competition. Her feature documentary THE LAST YEAR OF DARKNESS, which explores underground partying and alternative youth in China, has won the Special Mention at the 2023 CPH:DOX and is now being released by MUBI in over 20 countries across 4 continents. It's also highlighted in IndieWire's '20 Best Movies of 2024 (So Far)’. Her narrative feature SOME RAIN MUST FALL has won the Special Jury Award at the 2024 Berlinale Encounters Competition, as well as the Best Performance and Best Cinematography at the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival’s International Feature Competition. Sol Ye was the Pre-selection Jury for the 5th NOWNESS Talent Awards as well as the 7th IDF West Lake International Documentary Festival.
