The documentary Always (从来) is racking up awards at festivals, announcing itself as an Oscar contender despite a lack of theatrical distribution.
The film directed by Deming Chen and produced by Hansen Lin, built around poetry of unexpected power and poignancy written by a Chinese schoolboy and his classmates, won the top documentary award at the recently concluded Camden International Film Festival (CIFF) in Maine. A few days ago, it won a Special Jury Award at the Tirana International Film Festival in Albania.
“Six years in the making, the film balances fragility and strength, capturing fleeting moments of loss, resilience, and imagination with rare sincerity,” the Tirana jury wrote. “Through its lyrical form and profound respect for its subject, the film reminds us that poetry flows everywhere, even from the heart of a country boy, and can be a cinematic tool that transcends all barriers and allows us to connect with gazes and visions of distant realities.”
Always (从来) qualified for Oscar consideration this year by winning the DOX:Award at CPH:DOX in Copenhagen in March. Chen, based now in Beijing, grew up in a rural area of Hunan province. The documentary project originated when he learned of a middle school near his hometown where a teacher encouraged her pupils to write poetry.
“Writing poems is not a normal thing, especially in rural China or in the Chinese education system,” Lin explained during a Q&A at CIFF. “A teacher teaching you to write poems is not common.”
One of the schoolkids, Youbin Gong, wrote a poem he titled “Ambiguity”: “Something is swirling in the pit of my heart/In the sky’s bluish heart/a word hasn’t found its mouth.”
As the director learned more about Gong – that his mother had abandoned him as a small child and that he was being raised primarily by his grandparents – he crafted the documentary around the young poet.
“Deming thinks it is a destiny to meet Gong,” Lin said, interpreting for Chen at the CIFF Q&A. “That’s because he also shares a really similar background. When Deming was a little kid, his mother wasn’t at home, and he had this photo of his mother and looked at it at night. Sometimes he cried, sometimes he didn’t know what to do, how to find his mother. So all of these things made him feel really connected to Gong and his story and family.”
Lin – who grew up in China and is now based in New York – also identified closely with Gong. After hearing about the documentary project, the producer tells Deadline, “I immediately thought about my own childhood… My parents weren’t at home very often. Both my parents moved to the city. There was a time I almost got lost on the street. I was looking for my mom. I asked all the strangers, ‘Have you seen my mom? Where’s my mom?’”
He says a passerby recognized him and took him to Lin’s grandmother who was helping to raise him. “I was hearing this story [told in Always (从来)], so I was like, okay, I understand how the loneliness is, especially when your parents are away and it’s a very similar childhood experience.”
That’s the unstated backdrop to Always (从来) — the great demographic and cultural shift in China that has seen millions of people from rural areas move to big cities, seeking work.
“I think back to the 1980s or early 1990s, all of our parents, they will find jobs in the city. It’s quite hard for them to go back to their hometown and see us, quite often,” Lin notes, adding that parents can’t simply “take their kids along” for multiple reasons.
“Our parents cannot afford having so many kids in the city,” he says. “[And] in China we have this hukou system — people born in a certain area, we are not allowed to register for school beyond the area. So, it’s very hard for us to be a student in the cities because we were not born in that specific area.”
Always (从来) maintains focus on Gong and the pastoral world around him, not on these larger societal questions. The documentary deliberately avoids a traditional narrative style, instead unfolding in a succession of powerful visual moments as well as scenes of the youngster with his aging grandparents at home in their very, very modest dwelling. Grandma cooks food in a fire pit in the floor.
Lin says when he first met Chen, the director was previewing his project at pitching forums where he was advised to take a far more literal approach to the storytelling than he preferred.
“A lot of very experienced filmmakers told him to focus more about this social issue stuff. ‘Who are these kids? Where are their families? You have to be really articulate about everything there… You need to introduce their family members, everyone, blah blah blah,’” Lin recalls. “Yeah, anthropology-like stuff.”
Chen’s more sensory approach is being vindicated with all the awards. Always (从来) next screens at the BFI London Film Festival, then at a festival in Cologne, Germany, followed by the El Gouna Film Festival in Egypt, and IDFA in Amsterdam.
Chen was overcome with emotion at the Camden International Film Festival after his film was announced as the winner of the prestigious Harrell Award.
“We have tried to submit our project to many foundations. We filled out a lot of grant applications… We got a lot of rejections,” Deming said, his words translated by Lin. “The rejections make us doubt if we can really make a film.”
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