Well-regarded as a champion of independent and alternative cinema, South Korea’s second-largest festival proudly tackles the contemporary political
Jeonju
When does childhood end? This slippery question becomes the crux of Chinese filmmaker Deming Chen’s second feature documentary, Always. The film, which won the top prizes at CPH:DOX and Jeonju over the past two months, centers on an 8-year-old boy, Gong Youbin, and his family in a small village in southern China’s Hunan province. Before the film’s North American premiere at Hot Docs, Chen and Producer Hansen Lin shared with Documentary the feedback they received at different labs and forums, the selection of poems for their film, and the approach of prioritizing emotions, rather than logic, in crafting the story.