CHANGFENG TOWN is a thoughtful tome that, like the pandemic, compels one to slow down and observe humanity and all of its imperfections: bitterness, secrets, gossip, ostracization, lust, and adultery. At times, the camera takes on human/like qualities as it suddenly veers in another direction to avoid sources of trauma, including the town’s pervasive rat infestation. The cinematography, sound design, and art direction illuminate the town’s surrealist and supernatural qualities that transport the viewer to an imaginary time and space that is slower and simpler in which its citizens are eccentric, complex, and all seem to know one another.

CHANGFENG TOWN is very much a coming/of/age story made all the more endearing with its narration from the perspective of Scabby who pieces the characters’ stories together as he recalls his own carefree childhood as well as incredible performances by the ensemble’s younger cast members.

Director Wang Jing

One word that comes up again and again to describe rising female director Wang Jing’s third film—which debuted at the 2019 Busan International Film Festival—is nostalgia. Drawing from such sources of inspiration as recollections and sentiments from her own small town upbringing, Gabriel García Márquez’s Macondo town in the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, and elements found in the work of such auteurs as Truffaut and Fellini, this comforting and charming ode to rural life contains sketches centering around the lives of five characters and their interconnected yet disparate lives over the course of one summer.