In 1991, in the village of Bawangtai, time hasn’t quite caught up to the country around it. Huo Meng’s “Living the Land,” winner of the Silver Bear for Best Director at the 2025 Berlin Film Festival, is now rolling out an official trailer ahead of its theatrical opening beginning April 3, 2026, teeing up a coming-of-age story built around the slow churn of rural life and the quiet violence of being left behind.
Set against the backdrop of rapid industrialization elsewhere in China, the film centers on 10-year-old Xu Chuang, the third-born child of a farming family in Henan province. When his parents and older siblings leave to find work in Shenzhen, Chuang is abruptly placed with his wheat farmer uncle, absorbed into the extended Li family while carrying the persistent sense that he doesn’t fully belong. What follows is a seasonal, ground-level portrait of upbringing shaped by labor and routine—bucolic and harsh in the same breath, with each new cycle of work tightening the knot between tenderness and endurance.
Chuang’s closest points of connection come through two figures who understand displacement in different ways: a young aunt uneasy with the pressure to marry, and a surly but kind great-grandmother nearing a century old. As the months turn, Chuang learns the rhythms of the land they all work—rhythms that feed people, exhaust them, and keep them tethered to a place even when the larger world is sprinting away.
The film has been framed as both an intimate coming-of-age drama and an epic of everyday provincial existence, rooted in a transitional moment for the country. The Hollywood Reporter described it as taking place during “a time when major reforms were transforming China from a nation of rural laborers into the industrial powerhouse it is today.”
Here’s the official synopsis:
In 1991, as China undergoes sweeping socio-economic changes, 10-year-old Chuang, the third child of his family, must remain in the village due to family plans. Against the backdrop of modernization, cycles of births, deaths, marriages, and funerals reveal the enduring weight of tradition and the pressures of balancing familial responsibilities with a rapidly changing world.
“Living the Land” is written and directed by Huo Meng and stars Wang Shang, Zhang Yanrong, and Zhang Chuwen. It’s produced by Zhang Fan, with Guo Daming serving as cinematographer.
“Living The Land” opens April 3 at Film Forum in New York before going wide via Film Movement. Watch the first trailer exclusively below.
