Wu Fan

An unexpected and joyous exploration of womanhood, autonomy and self-reinvention, told through the video diaries and personal archive of the free-spirited XiXi and the evolution of the friendship between her and the filmmaker.

On a small island, the indigenous Da’o people live in harmony with the Pacific. Their love for the sea prompts 19-year-old Vongnyan to enlist in the navy. Returning broken, he confides his traumas to the waves during bouts of insomnia. His younger brother, Bo, plays and lives in the water, completely carefree, yet he, too, will soon have to choose his future.

In Alentejo, Portugal, the region with the highest suicide rate in Europe, the scorching wind blows the message that“solitude kills”. In one of the empty villages where death and loneliness seem to be looming large, the old “Alentejanos” Inacio and Francisca resist the melancholy by accompanying each other.