Hu Sanshou will receive this year’s True Vision Award in honor of his achievements in and contributions to the field of nonfiction filmmaking. His latest film, Resurrection, will screen at the festival in addition to his previous film, Mountain Village. As part of the award, Sanshou was invited to present a screening of a film that influenced his filmmaking, and he chose Blue (Dir. Derek Jarman).

Hu Sanshou was born in Shaanxi province in China. He studied cinematography at Xi’an Academy of Fine Arts and graduated in 2015. Since 2013, he has been involved with the Folk Memory Project, a collective of artists who document oral histories from survivors of the Great Famine, which devastated rural China between 1958 and 1961. Over 150 young filmmakers have participated in the project, making documentaries to preserve memories of the Cultural Revolution, the Great Leap Forward, and the Four Cleanups Movement. Sanshou’s films feature his own hometown, and he sees his work in protecting these stories as a form of rebellion and silent testimony. His films have a minimalist aesthetic, focused on telling stories of ancestors and elders, and despite his rigorous formal approach, the films also have a deeply intimate quality, honoring each individual’s personality rather than flattening people into the monolith of history.

Resurrection is a deeply immersive portrait of his village after a highway is announced that will cut right through the citizens’ home. This news prompts the start of the work to relocate the ancestors who are buried on this land. Poignant and sometimes humorous observational sequences of the exhumations are interwoven with oral history sketches of each displaced forebear as seen through the memories of the villagers.