Obsthof

Nana Xu, DE/CN 2025, 30 min, Mandarin OmeU

Despite all odds, Nana Xu's film 'Obsthof' shows with urgent clarity how important the aspect of capturing can be for documentary film. Her journey to the remote "Obsthof" region in the southwest of the Chinese province of Sichuan becomes a search for traces of the history of her home town. A labor camp during the Cultural Revolution, the place experienced several rewrites, became a prison with fruit cultivation in the following years and finally a drug treatment center. Some former prisoners, including Xu's father, still live in the ruins of the repressive apparatus. Nana Xu approaches the fates inscribed in the layers of time and has developed an impressive work against repression and forgetting.