Upstream (2023)

　　Harbin, China—a place so cold it’s famous for its international Ice and Snow Festival. With his camera in hand, filmmaker Xin Liu returns to his native city in China’s northernmost province to visit his childhood friends, only to find that their lives and dreams have changed. But are they really his friends? And are those their dreams? In an unpredictable mix of fact and fiction, Liu presents a city as strange as its inhabitants. He meets up with a high school friend named Zhang, who once sold newspaper advertising but now has jumped the Firewall to become a popular YouTuber, illegally infiltrating Harbin’s abandoned industrial buildings. Liu also visits an ex-girlfriend, who greets him with regrets and accusations of abandonment. Shot throughout from the filmmaker’s point of view, Liu’s camera wanders onto trains, into cars and on streets to roam a landscape of elusive characters. A unique, hybrid meditation on strange homecomings. Aisha Jamal.