Xiānghé

Xiānghé (2025) is a history, romance film directed by Yang Fudong.

A 15 part film featuring scenes from Xianghe, running from the mundane to the surreal: people parade in opera costumes, slaughter pigs in public and dine on the fields; they bury the dead and get married, tickling the bride and groom, everything done without speech. Sitting somewhere between intimate personal reels and detached ethnographic records, the work creates a simultaneous sense of immersion and distance – of the type you might associate with end-of-life flashbacks. Yang gives nostalgia a fantastic, mystical bent, as if to suggest that to revel in memory is a creative act.

Cast

Tan Zhuo

Lv Yulai

Wang Yang

Zhang Xinzhong

Huang Ailing

Li Bo

Guo Jiawei

Guo Wanchao

Wang Xudong

Wang Quanxi

Li Yan

Jin Rui