2023 / 71 min / Canada / Mandarin / 1.33:1 / Colour
Upstream follows “I,” a wildlife photographer returning from Canada to Harbin after years of living abroad. Rather than restoring a stable sense of home, the journey unfolds through fragmented memories, altered relationships, and places suspended between familiarity and estrangement. Alongside this human passage, Pacific salmon travel thousands of kilometres back to the freshwater river where they were born, carrying bodies transformed by life in the ocean. Moving between these two migrations, the film reflects on displacement, belonging, and the paradox of return: home continues to call, even when neither the place nor the one returning remains the same.
"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 from the filmmaker’s point of view throughout, Liu’s camera wanders onto trains, into cars, and onto streets, roaming a landscape of elusive characters. A unique, hybrid meditation on strange homecomings."
Aisha Jamal @Hot Docs 2023
Screening:
Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, Canada - World Premiere
April 30 & May 5, 2023, TIFF Bell Lightbox, Toronto
Funds:
Universal Studios Canada - Graduate Production Scholarship
York Centre for Asian Research - Canada‐China Initiatives Fund
Ontario Graduate Scholarship, Canada
Field Work Fund, York University
Press:
Review: An Endurance Swim in Old Waters (BY POV)
Thesis Paper- Upstream, York University
A docufiction film by Xin Liu, York Centre for Asian Research
