Three attempts at reconnecting with often traumatic pasts, all leading to flights from home and the need for personal reinvention. A documentary triptych of many layers and emotions, whose parts connect with each other in unexpected ways.
Three filmmakers in England – where none of them was born. Xiaolu Guo travels to the small seaside town in China where she grew up with her grandparents, only to find streets renamed and parts of the town rebuilt. The old times weren’t too good, the new ones are barely better, but a lot is different. Andrea Luka Zimmerman revisits her personal archive, in particular diaries from her teenage years, that detail the monstrous abuse she faced at the hands of her mother, making her flee the German south for a very different life in the UK. Iranian filmmaker Mania Akbari realises a cinematic conversation piece set almost completely inside an apartment that feels eerily outside of place and time. Even if the big and small screens provide concrete information galore, it’s not sure where she and her relatives are – at least in their heads, a condition of being forcibly uprooted.
Three Ways of Returning is a triptych of many layers and emotions, ranging from rage to melancholia, whose parts connect with each other in unexpected, sometimes bemusing and sometimes devastating ways.
– Olaf Möller
Film details
Productielanden
China, Germany, Iran, United Kingdom
Jaar
2026
Festivaleditie
IFFR 2026
Lengte
81'
Medium/Formaat
DCP
Taal
German, English, Farsi, Chinese
Première status
International premiere
Director
Mania Akbari, Xiaolu Guo, Andrea Luka Zimmerman
Producer
Mania Akbari, Xiaolu Guo, Andrea Luka Zimmerman
Sales / World rights holder
Mania Akbari, Xiaolu Guo, Andrea Luka Zimmerman
Screenplay
Mania Akbari, Xiaolu Guo, Andrea Luka Zimmerman
Cinematography
Mania Akbari, Xiaolu Guo, Andrea Luka Zimmerman
Editing
Philippe Ciompi, Andrea Luka Zimmerman, Mania Akbari, Diyar Akar