Silver Bird and Rainbow Fish

• Lei Lei
• 101 min
• United States, Netherlands
• 2022
• Animated

Cultural revolution, starvation, and hardship are transformed into a magical saga in this wonderful hybrid debut by the acclaimed animator Lei Lei.

We follow the story of a Chinese family, from Mao’s five-year plan – The Great Leap Forward – launched at the end of the 1950s, through the Cultural Revolution and up to our director’s birth in the 1980s. Lei Lei portrays in images the authentically raspy sound clips, where he interviews his grandfather and father, with old photographs, newspaper cut-outs, creative collages, and playful clay animations; where institutionalized children turn into birds in cages, and colourful fish come to the rescue when it is needed most. With his genial visual poetry, whereby he puts daily events and fun anecdotes that get caught in memory as much space as the life-changing transformations, Lei Lei succeeds at making his home country’s incomprehensible history tangible.

- Freddy Olsson

• Animation
• Familj
• Historia
• Verklighetsbaserat