Merry Christmas, Yiwu

  • 94'
  • Sweden
  • 2020

Even though China does not celebrate Christmas, there are over 600 Christmas-decoration factories in Yiwu, China. They are often run as a family business and manufacture year round, employing people from across the country. This observational documentary focuses on several of them, located in and around Yiwu. There are no high-tech machines, just people working really hard putting glitter on baubles, pom poms on Christmas hats and assembling Father Christmases.

The camera trails the workers at the factory and elsewhere – their conversations, love issues, a game of pool, shopping and eating, and the calls home, far away from Yiwu's prosperity. People joke about child labour in China, complain about the heat, but basically everyone seems to accept this artificial, surreal society where your colleagues are your new family and the factory is home. A portrait without voice-over of a place created where communism and globalism intersect and transform one another.

Director
Mladen Kovacevic
Premiere
World premiere
Countries of production
Sweden, Serbia, France, Germany, Belgium, Qatar
Year
2020
Festival Edition
IFFR 2020
Length
94'
Medium
DCP
Language
Mandarin
Producers
Iva Plemic Divjak, Mario Adamson, Ruth Reid, Jasmina Sijercic, Heino Deckert, Thierry Detaille
Production Companies
Horopter Film Production, Sisyfos Film Production, Bocalupo Films, ma.ja.de., Visible Film
Sales
Deckert Distribution
Screenplay
Mladen Kovacevic
Cinematography
Marko Milovanovic
Editor
Jelena Maksimovic
Sound Design
Patrik Strömdahl
Music
Olof Dreijer
Director
Mladen Kovacevic
Premiere
World premiere
Countries of production
Sweden, Serbia, France, Germany, Belgium, Qatar
Year
2020
Festival Edition
IFFR 2020
Length
94'
Medium
DCP
Language
Mandarin
Producers
Iva Plemic Divjak, Mario Adamson, Ruth Reid, Jasmina Sijercic, Heino Deckert, Thierry Detaille
Production Companies
Horopter Film Production, Sisyfos Film Production, Bocalupo Films, ma.ja.de., Visible Film
Sales
Deckert Distribution
Screenplay
Mladen Kovacevic
Cinematography
Marko Milovanovic
Editor
Jelena Maksimovic
Sound Design
Patrik Strömdahl
Music
Olof Dreijer