The life of a retiree is disturbed by eerie invasions into her privacy that gradually unveil the undisclosed chapter in Chinese political history.
Deng is a stubborn retired widow who spends her days caring about her two grown up sons and her elderly mother, despite her family efforts to stop her. But her daily routine starts derailing when she keeps receiving anonymous calls that her family believe she has imagined. But when invasions into her life escalate, the family start asking the logical questions: Who could have anything against a helpless old woman? Even her husband’s ghost doesn’t seem to know.
»The first idea that I had was to make a film about a woman always on the move. /.../ I found that this was a popular phenomenon in China, so I started to explore the causes. People aged 70 today grew up around 1949, after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China. They have been educated by the different political movements, which our country went through. And they have gone through them all. From then till now, they have been completely brainwashed and became insensitive. That’s the reason for the emptiness of their existence. In the film, I wanted the old lady to realise what is actually going on.« (Xiaoshuai Wang)
Xiaoshuai Wang
Born in 1966 in Shanghai. Graduated from the Beijing Film Academy. Wrote and directed his first feature, The Days, at the age of 27. Acclaimed at first, the film was soon blacklisted and its distribution banned in China. Filmed Frozen anonymously, under the pseudonym Wu Ming (which means "No Name" in Chinese). Red Amnesia, Xiaoshuai Wang’s twelfth film, premiered in competition in Venice.