In 2017, the film was a shock to the system. In the years since, as the world has lived through a global pandemic, the conversation around Mrs. Fang has shifted. We have all become more familiar with ventilators, oxygen levels, and death counts. We have all experienced, through news reports, the isolation of the dying.
: The film won the Golden Leopard (Pardo d'oro), the top prize at the 2017 Locarno Film Festival . Mrs. Fang- Wang Bing -2017-
In the end, Mrs. Fang is not about death. It is about the radical act of looking at the person society tells us to look away from. It is a monument to a woman who, in her final days, became a mirror for the living. And that is why, nearly a decade after its release, the title still echoes in the halls of documentary cinema as a masterpiece of unflinching humanity. In 2017, the film was a shock to the system
Mrs. Fang now feels prescient. It is a pre-COVID artifact that predicted our collective confrontation with fragility. The film asks: How do we treat those who are leaving? And how do we bear witness? We have all become more familiar with ventilators,
While the middle-aged children engage in "cacophonous" squabbles over burial plans and past family drama, the younger generation often retreats to the nearby river to fish.