Soft Ruins / 柏香林
2025 / 28 min 31 sec / Documentary / home video footage / Chinese dialogue / Chinese and English subtitles
A poetic short documentary filmed between Luzhou and Shanghai, China.
Logline
Soft Ruins returns to the director's childhood neighborhood in Luzhou, tracing how home, memory, and identity are reshaped by rapid urbanization, social change, and the fragile persistence of everyday images.
Director's Statement
Soft Ruins is a return to childhood memory and a conversation with a past self. In a time of accelerated urban renewal, the spaces that once held emotional certainty are continually rewritten. The film uses restrained, delicate images to gather overlooked details, neighborly traces, and spatial echoes, turning a private memory into a shared emotional landscape. It understands nostalgia not as retreat, but as a way of drawing strength from what remains.
Stills
Credits
- Director / Cinematography / Editing — Kio Wang
- Country of production — China
- Language — Chinese
- Subtitles — Chinese and English
Festivals / Screenings
- Family Image Film Festival submission materials, 2025
- Available materials note multiple festival selections; specific public festival names are not listed in the files reviewed