Filming a blind person involves an implicit dose of violence, one which goes beyond the usual asymmetry between the one who watches and the one who is watched; in this case one cannot return the camera’s unwavering gaze in any way. Filmmaker Wei Deng seems to be aware of this asymmetry when he follows the shuffling gait of his blind grandfather, a fortune teller living his final days in an unrecognizable China, where beliefs and traditions are swept away by the questionable cult of material success to which even his son, a prosperous real estate developer, adheres fervently. And yet beyond the old man’s physical decrepitude and his despondency, an undeniable strength pulsates within him, towards which the other characters caught in the maelstrom of the everyday struggle involuntarily gravitate. The relationship between the grandfather and his nephew is the pacified version of that between the father and the son, between one’s wisdom and the other’s deviousness, the stability of the ancestral realm and the malleability of modernity, as well as between the lethargy of imminent death and the vigour of life. Despite their incapacity to share a common vision of the world, both in a metaphorical and concrete sense, the members of these three generations feel a rough affection towards each other, one which is stripped of any hint of sentimentalism and that also permeates the filming style: raw, direct, and conferring dignity to all the places, things, and people within the frame. (Liri Alienor Chapelan)