Four Journeys

Netherlands / China 2021, 115 min, English, Chinese and French, Hebrew & English subtitles

He was born illegally—a second child in one-child-policy China. After years of guilt and alienation, director Louis Hothothot tries to find his place in a family that seems to have moved on without him. In his travels—from the Netherlands to the big-city house in China where his middle-class parents live with his sister, from his elderly grandmother’s Chinese village to his future in-laws’ house in France—he tries to understand what had moved his parents to bring him into the world, knowing the staggering price they would pay: a heavy fine and a devastating blow to their careers and social status. The film sheds light on Chinese society from an intensely personal perspective that forces the family to divulge a painful secret but also, for the first time, offers a path toward healing.

Previous Festivals: IDFA

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