Xiao Jia Going Home

Xia Jia - Going Home Filmmaker Damien Ounouri follows Golden Lion-winning Mainland filmmaker Jia Zhang Ke on a journey back to his hometown. "As I was studying cinema, I decided to make my end-of-study project a documentary about Zhang Ke. For the basis of this film I wanted Zhang Ke to take me to the places that are important to him and have him speak. And so, guided by him, take the paths he had already took. I wanted to create a dialogue between the present (the filmmaker and myself) and the past (his life), the imagination created by his films when revisiting shooting locations (and the existing gap when these places have changed, iullustrating the mutation of China) and the viewer's imagination. For me, Zhang Ke is one of my (rare) mentors in cinema, with his themes, his aesthetics, his ethics and his integrity, not forgetting the context in which he evolved. To make a film about him was to learn about him, but also to understand where his strength comes from, his cinema and consequently make him think about my own way of doing films." Damien Ounouri

With: Jia Zhangke, Wang Hongwei, Zhang Yang, Yu Lik Wai