Welcome

Story

Synopsis

A black screen. Four voices are heard. Two men are telling and repeating to two others that they are “welcome to the region”. Gradually, the situation becomes clearer: the filmmaker, Zhu Rikun, is on a shoot in Sichuan. His interest is in the lung diseases that plague the region’s workers, a health problem already present in his film Dust and which the Chinese State is trying to hush up. So here he is, invited to a brief interview with the local authorities, which is audio-recorded and played back in full in the film. A raw document that bares the methods of power: the insistence of the censors, their successive changes in strategy ranging from sugar-coated threats to the express demand that the images be destroyed, which only fuels the desire to bear witness even further.

Director

Rikun Zhu

Language

Chinese

Country

Switzerland, China, United States of America

Release date

19 March 2016