Chinese Cinema Cycle

Film directed by QIAO Sixue
2022 | China | 96 min | Drama

Alus is a Mongolian electronic musician confused about what he wants in life. He also cannot bear to see his mother, who suffers from Alzheimer’s, living like a captive in his brother’s city apartment, so he decides to take her back to the grassland in search of the home she yearns for. As his mother’s condition worsens, Alus tries to stop her from getting lost by tying his mother to him with a rope. The rope is like an umbilical cord that reconnects him to his mother’s thoughts, his hometown, and his native culture…

The Cord of Life is about nostalgia, returning to one’s motherland. We travel with the film through the city’s electronic music night to the dancing and laughter accompanied by the horsehead violin music on the Mongolian grasslands. The cord that ties son to mother serves as a metaphor that binds the two generations and allows them to revisit the sounds of the past and the scent of the grassland in their memories. The loosening of this cord represents the physical demise of nomadic culture and the new generation's embrace and acceptance of their roots.

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