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Original Film Title: Onward
Director’s Name: Sun Yuchen
Writer’s Name: Wei Shirui
Producer: Zhang Lu
Country of Origin: China
Country of Filming: China
Language: Chinese
Runtime: 14 minutes 52 seconds
Film Description:
Zhou Xiaoman was the sole caretaker of her mother, Lin Qiaoyun, who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease. Trapped in the world of her late husband’s passing, Lin Qiaoyun was consumed by her desire for a sea burial and had filled their home with paper boats symbolizing farewell. Exhausted yet accommodating, Zhou Xiaoman repeatedly accompanied her mother to the sea to carry out an endless mourning ritual.
This was to be their final farewell at sea. Zhou Xiaoman had finally decided to take her mother south, away from their hometown, for better care. But when her mother stubbornly stuffed a paper boat into the suitcase, the last thread of Zhou Xiaoman’s composure snapped. Lin Qiaoyun, no longer recognizing her own daughter, left home alone.
Zhou Xiaoman found her by the shore. A paper boat her mother had set adrift lay stranded in the mud. Mistaking her daughter for a stranger, Lin Qiaoyun invited her to “set sail together.”
In the struggle between memory and oblivion, Zhou Xiaoman took the sweat-soaked paper boat and boarded that never-docking boat in her mother’s inner world.