MAIN COMPETITION - CPH:DOX | “A pandemic documentary that plays like a horror movie."- Variety
COVID-19 Pandemic • Lockdown • China's Zero-COVID Policy
Date of Completion: 2024 | Run Time: 90 minutes | Language: Chinese with English subtitles | Captions: No | Includes: Transcript | Director: Truman F | Producer: S. Leo Chiang
NIGHT OF NIGHTS unfolds in the surreal world of the post-2020 China, where a plague has changed everything, and the lonely cities of Wuhan and Shanghai reside on a faraway planet where nights exist without days. There, patients beg to be treated at hospital gates, and children cross unimaginable obstacles just to see their parents. In the wealthiest cities, many go hungry. Under at-all-cost government policies, many quietly disappear from this world.
After three years, the once-familiar China has become something else, with so much that is precious now lost. When restrictions are finally lifted and the gates swing wide open, it feels as though freedom has been reclaimed. Bags are packed in hopes of escaping this endless night, only to be washed away by the dark tide of the times into the deeper unknown.
A nocturnal and semi-surrealistic science fiction portrait of life in two Chinese megacities after 2020, shot at night with a hypnotic intensity and with the lens pointing to the future.