Whispers in May

A visually striking, intimate, tender, humorous, and serious hybrid documentary.

Winner of the main prize (Dox:Award) at CPH:DOX, one of the world’s largest documentary film festivals, in Copenhagen earlier this year. This hybrid documentary magically combines gritty realism and staged elements. We are in southern China, in the mountainous Liangshan region, where we meet 14-year-old Quihuo as she transitions from childhood to adulthood. Like many other children in this impoverished part of China, her parents work in cities elsewhere in the country, leaving the children to fend for themselves.

When Quihuo feels herself entering puberty, she takes her friends on a journey to another village to find the right skirt to mark her transition into womanhood. Along the way, they encounter many challenges.