Mladen Kovačević: Merry Christmas Yiwu
This text is written by the festival directors Svetlana and Zoran Popovic
This is not a film about China. This is a film about people’s dreams. This is a film about everything that makes a dream about China.
Wonderful and enchanting, this film immediately breaks through all barriers and introduces us to the very center of the intimate circle of dedicated manufacturers of New Year’s decorations. The city of Yiwu, hidden by the shadow of huge Shanghai, every year in December, before Christmas in the western world, becomes one of the most important points on the map of the world for the success of Christian holiday. In that place, series and series of magical, shiny, colourful balls and decorations for Christmas trees around the world are created. This film reveals to us human touches that create colourful Christmas glow. With masterly created long one shot-scenes, Mladen Kovačević brings us closer to faces and secrets, personal stories, hidden desires, hopes. He introduces us to people who become close, dear, interesting to us. At the same time, this is a testimony about leaps in time, about the people who face the world that came out of their vague ideas about the future in which they turned up miraculously. All individual stories exceptionally fit into a vivid, dynamic composition of constant change and never-ending discoveries. Life captured by discreet observation is revealed to us in its exciting fullness and beauty.
A superb modern documentary that amazes with scenes shot for a real cinematic experience.
Serbia, Sweden, Germany, France, Belgium, Qatar 2020, 94 minutes
http://www.magnificent7festival.org/en/index.php
