On December 18th, 2023, director Cai Jie’s first feature film "People Traveling Together" was officially selected as the "Bright Future" unit of the 53rd Rotterdam International Film Festival, which will be the European premiere of this film. Previously, the film has been shortlisted for Busan International Film Festival and Pingyao International Film Festival. This Cantonese film, filmed in Guangzhou and Hong Kong, tells the story of Guangzhou girl Mai Wanting going to Hong Kong to find her father. Mai Wanting is about to get married, but she is a marginal figure in her fiance’s family. My father was a businessman who came to the mainland from Hong Kong to run an orchard many years ago. As the English film title Borrowed Time implies, my mother’s marriage is an unpredictable "borrowed time".
In Hongkong, Wan Ting met her half-brother, who told her story of getting lost in a horse farm in Guangzhou when she was a child. She also reunited with the boy she met when she was young because she bought a bite-sized disc, and now she is studying for a doctorate in anthropology in Hong Kong. They followed the projected picture of the tropical jungle and crossed the boundary that is both real and illusory. Finally, Wan Ting met his father at the fruit stall. The two men looked at each other for a long time, and the film came to an abrupt end.
Guangzhou and Hong Kong, the past and the present, reality and dreams, "Traveling with People" jumps lightly between multiple time and space. Because two photographers are in charge of the mirror, the paragraphs in Guangdong and Hong Kong show different tones.
The producer of the film is Guan Jinpeng, a well-known director in Hong Kong and the author of Ruan Lingyu and Rouge Kou. production designer Albert Poon has cooperated with Xu Anhua for many times in films such as Sister Tao, and with the participation of Hong Kong actors such as Sun Yang and Taibao, the origin of "A Crowd of People Traveling Together" and Hong Kong films is clear at a glance.
Cai Jie was born in Chaozhou, Guangdong Province in 1988. Lin Dongping, the actor of Mai Wanting, and Wang Yin, the screenwriter of the film, were all his alumni when they were undergraduates at Guangzhou University. They joined the community and made short films together on campus. In 2014, "Returning to the Province", which was shortlisted for Busan International Short Film Festival, was the product of their cooperation.
In 2012, Cai Jie came to the Tibetan area in western Sichuan to shoot the master’s graduation short film "Buddha Children on the Clouds". For more than ten years, Cai Jie took coming to western Sichuan every summer to follow the growth of two Buddha children as a special holiday, and now they have returned to the customs one after another. Cai Jie used to be a reporter, and later returned to Guangzhou University as a teacher in the direction of editing and directing. In class, he told students about the history and types of documentaries, and made a pull-tab for Hou Xiaoxian’s Childhood and Hirokazu Koreeda’s Nobody Know. He wanted to give some inspiration to students’ creation through Nobody Know: how to develop a work from news events or social issues around him.
"A Crowd of People Traveling Together" uses a large number of sound samples from the streets of Guangzhou, litchi trees shaken in the wind and rain, villages in the city with lights at night, and blocks with old photos. These empty shots are also impressive. "The film skillfully uses warm light and clever photography skills to capture this inner journey and shuttle between the boundaries of circulation." The official recommendation of the Busan Film Festival Organizing Committee reads.
During the filming of "Traveling Together", Cai Jie also finished his doctoral thesis at the Central Academy of Drama, sorting out mainland films set in Lingnan since 1978. Nowadays, "People Traveling Together" is naturally placed in this context. In Pingyao and Guangzhou, Southern Weekend reporters interviewed Cai Jie.
