El Gouna Film Festival – ‘Mrs. Fang’

CAIRO – 20 September 2017: “Mrs. Fang” by director Wang Bing is a brutal, unflinching and honest documentary of an old Chinese woman on the last ten days of her life, slowly wasting away with Alzheimer’s while her family watches.

Set in a poor Chinese fishing village, we learn little about who Mrs. Fang was; it is not a film about her life, but about her death. Yet more than that, the film is an exploration of the interconnection between life and death.

As she slowly dies, life goes on around her; fishermen continue to fish, her family discusses funeral plans. Much of the pain they feel comes as much from waiting for her to die as watching it. This is a film both highly personal yet universal; death is an unavoidable part of our lives, and your reaction to Mrs. Fang’s slow expiration speaks heavily about our own views on death and life.

Premiering in Switzerland on August 9, 2017, “Mrs. Fang” won the Golden Leopard at the 70th Locarno International Film Festival.