Time and Tide

A Melbourne filmmaker returns to the small Chinese town of his childhood, reconnecting with his family under difficult, emotionally profound circumstances.

When his father suffers a stroke, Melbourne-based filmmaker Vee Shi returns to his hometown, Longtian, Fuqing, in south-eastern China, a small rural community that he left behind when he was 13. As the family’s proud, stubborn patriarch struggles with his compromised health and need for care, his estranged wife and daughter – who, due to China’s one-child policy, was given up for adoption prior to the director’s birth – are suddenly entrusted with the duty, and burden, of looking after a man who has often treated them badly. These strained family dynamics evoke a bigger-picture portrait of changing Chinese society and social values, where the once-total dedication to family is falling away.

This unique hybrid documentary, initially conceived of as a scripted film wherein Shi’s family would play themselves, is an at times shockingly intimate portrait of familial love, duty and trauma. The MIFF Accelerator alum’s previous short Jia (MIFF 2023) was a drama inspired by his relationship with his mother, as well as the familial and cultural estrangement of living in a different country in another hemisphere. The Visions du Réel–selected Time and Tide – the first film ever to be shot in Longtian, and only the second to feature the disappearing Fuqing dialect – profoundly and often painfully extends that inquiry to the contested space of a fractured family home.

Content: Melbourne International Film Festival