2025 Nighttime Sounds

The 2025 award winner is Chinese director Zhongchen Zhang with his second feature film, ›Nighttime Sounds‹, about the fate of many women in rural China and the country's painful one-child policy. The film impressed the international jury with its dense, magical imagery and narrative depth that links personal and generational losses.

Nighttime Sounds

The fate of women and girls in rural China unfolds in an imaginative, mysterious, and poetic rush of images – inspired by Asian traditions.

The statues from the Song Dynasty, standing amidst the wheat fields near the village of Maozhuang, are 800 years old. Here lives eight-year-old Qing with her mother Hongmei. Her father works far from home throughout the year. Qing has a sister, but she was given away. One day, the sensitive girl encounters a ghostly, abandoned child who is searching for its mother. The two become friends and set out to find her together. While archaeological excavations are taking place nearby, Qing begins to hear a strange murmuring deep beneath the earth. Gradually, a shocking secret about her own mother rises to the surface.

A visually striking, magical social drama about the lives of women in rural China, told in a very unique style.

Director: Zhongchen Zhang
Country: China

2025 | 88 min. | Chinese
Subtitles: German, English

Cast_ Alin Chen, Li Yanxi, Gu Hanru Screenplay_ Zhongchen Zhang Camera_ Chang Reagon Producer_ Midi Z, Kunyang Chen, Zhao Yuyan, Wang Hongwei Rights_ HKIFF Collection