In his third film on life and work in the (once) heavily wooded north of China, Yu Guangyi (Survival Song) follows the lonely San Liangzi (46), who for the past ten years has been in love with a woman who doesn’t like men much. Intimate and revealing, but never rude. A moving and human portrait of a group of unemployed and above all lonely men who stayed behind when their wives moved to the city looking for work. They worked in the timber industry in the province of Heilongjiang, but deforestation has taken its toll. For instance, we see 46-year-old San Liangzi. Twelve years ago, he divorced his wife and became unemployed. For 10 years, he has had an eye on Wang Meizi, the only unmarried woman in the area. But the love is not mutual.

Following in the footsteps of directors such as Carlos Reygadas, the cinematographer Daniela Schneider works with non-professional actors for her first work, which narrates the struggle of a family in leading a normal life after experiencing the father’s serious sickness. The connotations offered in the film are recurrent in Mexican cinema: relations between different social classes and identity. A while back, Juan suffered a brain stroke; today he dependson everybody, including the employees. While, he finds amusement and comfort in horror movies,his wife Alicia tries to fight pain with memories of her glory days as a model. Matias, their only son, struggles to find a place in the midst of this situation.