Shattered

Tang Xixin is a retired railway official who has lost little of his outspoken character at the age of 80. He does not like to receive his adult children in his ramshackle home, but he makes an exception for his daughter Caifeng (who was a guest in Rotterdam last year). She runs a brothel and is involved in equally illegal mining practices. In other words, a woman of the world who tries energetically to keep out of the hands of the law.
Xu Tong films the family the way it is. The old Tang, with his flood of words, is an ideal witness to the 20th century; his daughter is a colourful symbol of the new China. Even though in the views of the state she is undoubtedly far from being a role model. Xu Tong’s intimate, occasionally raw style of filming fits in well with that. He does not make any moral judgement and that makes him controversial in China. The result is nevertheless sincere and authentic.