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The Land In Between

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The Land In Between

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Country/Region: Mainland China

Release Year: 2025

Story:

In a remote village in Xinjiang, language lost creates a quiet barrier between generations. Mountains, wrinkles, songs, children’s eyes—a bond beyond words lingers in the air.

Casts & Crews:

ZHOU Yilu
Directors

YANG Xuanyue
producer

ZHOU Yilu
scriptwriter

ZHOU Yilu
cinematographer

YANG Xuanyue
cinematographer

ZHOU Yilu
editor

Runtime: 15 minutes

Language: Mandarin, Tajik Dialect, Uyghur

Subtitles: Chinese, English

Festivals & Awards:
2025 Beijing International Short Film Festival - Best Film of Sinophone Competition, China
2025 FIRST International Film Festival, China
2025 HiShorts! Xiamen Short Film Week, China
2025 IM Cross-Strait Youth Film Festival, China
2025 Chinese Documentary New Directors Competition (CDND), China
2025 Izmir International Documentary Film Festival, Türkiye
2025 Visions du Réel - Film Market, Switzerland
2025 FOTOGENIA International Festival of Poetic Cinema, Mexico

Tags: #Language #Intergenerational #TajikEthnicGroupXinjiang

Stills:

Director‘s Statement:

In 2024, I encountered the Tajik community of Xinjiang through a work opportunity. I soon realized that most of the villagers had limited Mandarin proficiency. I often had to slow down, repeat sentences several times, and simplify words into syllables.

Interestingly, due to increasing assimilation policies, the most fluent Mandarin speakers in the village were often young children just entering primary school. They eagerly served as interpreters during moments of misunderstanding, and gradually, my communication with villagers began to flow through the voices of children.

Wandering through the village, I saw clues of this transformation: graffiti scribbled on muddy walls, with crooked Chinese characters—often misspelled—likely newly learned in class. These distorted combinations of words generated strange and beautiful meanings, which I instinctively recorded.

Just beyond the village lay Tashkurgan Town, with significantly more infrastructure. Police cars patrolled regularly, and new high-rise buildings were under construction. Many old graffiti and characters had been half-covered with fresh paint—as if the weeds of untamed language were being systematically erased.

During my two-week stay, my frustration at the beginning gave way to a strange intimacy. Connections formed that wouldn’t have emerged in a place of perfect communication. Language broke down. Words unraveled. And perhaps, in those tiny gaps between syllables, air could flow—and emotion, like music, could pass through.