In his “Dead Souls”, Wang Bing confronts once again the painful wounds caused by the Chinese dictatorship and the crimes against humanity it engendered. This time, the film revolves around the paranoia that took hold of Mao Zedong in the 1950s, at the height of Mccarthyism, and the circumstances in which he accused different people (predominantly young people and teachers, the so called “intellectuals”) of being “right-winged”. Similarly to Romania, where Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej was sending countless souls to the “Canal”, these people were imprisoned in re-education centres which turned out to be their death sentences. 

Aside from the invaluable testimonies of the survivors, what stands out is the manner in which the film was made and edited: it keeps us alert. From the first to the last shot of its 8 and a half hours, this structure guides us along a sensitive route, which will enable us to live through their stories with them. We are no longer simple spectators. The editing gives us the ability to see the invisible, to merge with these souls, to feel for ourselves all the dimensions and layers of this tragedy. 

And along this journey we will be reminded of other films - Claude Lanzmann’s “Shoah”, Rithy Panh’s “S21”, Chantal Akerman’s “South” -, other tragedies and other dictatorships, for Wang Bing talks to us of China in a manner that is universal. (Vanina Vignal)