LIFE AFTER LIFE

Zhang Hanyi’s first feature is an existentialist ghost story. A father and son walk deep in the forest. After disappearing for a time, the boy reappears speaking in the voice of his mother, risen from the dead. The man is not at all surprised, and goes with the ghost on a long ramble, both geographical and genealogical, through an abandoned Chinese countryside. Life After Life is the first feature by Zhang Hanyi; it is a film that brings together realism and the supernatural in a story clearly influenced by Albert Camus’ Myth of Sisyphus. This poetic, metaphorical Chinese film takes a minimalist approach, transporting its characters into an absurdist purgatory.