Interview von Gastautorin Luisa Kühne
Die Presseinfos liegen ungelesen in meinem Posteingang, ich habe sie nur überflogen, wie über eine Wasseroberfläche zu streichen, ohne einzutauchen. Vielleicht aus Angst, dass sich etwas verfestigt, bevor ich überhaupt dort bin. Dass der Film schon eine Form bekommt, die nicht mehr meine ist. Also bleibe ich an der Oberfläche, nehme nur Fragmente mit.
Ein paar Tage vor dem geplanten Trip zum «Visions du Réel» erzähle ich einer Freundin aus Madrid von «From Dawn to Dawn». Auf Instagram finde ich ein Video von der Regisseurin Xisi Sofia. Sie spricht über Entwurzelung – desarraigo.
Freitag, 24.04.
«Visions du Réel». Ich sehe sie zum ersten Mal, aus der Ferne. Sie läuft Richtung Hauptplatz: schwarze weite Hose, ein schwarzes Top, schwarze Sonnenbrille, lange schwarze Haare. Sie wirkte lässig, cool. Neben ihr eine Freundin – wie ich später erfahre, ihre Gafferin –, kurzer Bob, Pony, schwarz gekleidet.
Samstag, 25.04.
Ich stehe in der Schlange vor dem Grande Salle, streiche mit dem Daumen über mein Presseband. Mein Foto ist darauf laminiert, festgehalten, als wäre ich plötzlich jemand Offizielles. Ich bin aufgeregter als sonst, habe mir den Film vorab in Gedanken zusammengesetzt und fühle mich, als müsste ich ihn jetzt nur noch überprüfen, eben ganz offiziell, als offizielle Prüferin. Würde mir der Film gefallen? Und wenn nicht – könnte ich trotzdem darüber schreiben?
Ich sitze etwa in der sechsten Reihe des Grande Salle in Nyon. Ich freue mich. Neben mir hustet jemand ununterbrochen und putzt sich die Nase. Weniger schön.
Sofia und ihr Team, verteilt in den ersten Reihen. Sie machen Fotos, Selfies, lehnen sich zueinander, lachen viel. Ich schaue auf meinen leeren Platz zur Rechten.
Sonntag, 26.04.
Wartend in der kleinen Hotellobby, dort, wo es Frühstück gibt. Lehne mich an einen hohen Tisch, stütze den Ellenbogen auf, nehme ihn wieder herunter. Gehe auf Instagram, scrolle durch meine Fotos. Stütze mein Gesicht in die andere Hand. Schaue schnell zum Fahrstuhl. Schaue wieder weg. Ein paar Minuten verstreichen. Ich schaue auf mein Handy, noch einmal. Kurz nach zehn – der Termin ist früh. Dann tritt sie in mein Blickfeld, von links, und streckt mir die Hand entgegen. Sie ist etwas kleiner als ich. Sagt gleich, dass sie verkatert ist und frühstücken möchte, bietet mir an, mir auch etwas zu holen.
Ich bin kurz überfordert. Nehme erst eine Schüssel, lege ein Brötchen hinein, wundere mich, nehme es wieder raus, stelle die Schüssel zurück und nehme einen Teller. Ich will nicht viel – also nur das Brötchen, ein bisschen Butter, etwas Rührei. Wir setzen uns an einen kleinen Tisch mit zwei braunen Stühlen.
Die Geräusche um uns herum legen sich wie eine zweite Schicht über unser Gespräch – klapperndes Besteck, rauschende Stimmen, Klirren. Hinter mir setzt sich ein Teil ihres Teams.
Unsere Gesichter weniger als eine Armlänge voneinander entfernt, zwei Fremde, die versuchen, für einen Moment eine gemeinsame Sprache zu finden.
Ich denke an das Wort desarraigo und frage mich, ob Gespräche auch ein Versuch sind, sich für einen kurzen Moment irgendwo einzuwurzeln – in einer Stimme, in einem Blick, in einem Satz, der bleibt, auch wenn alles andere weiterzieht.
What inspired you to make this film?
Xisi Sofia Ye Chen: I grew up with stories about my brother, but they were always very fragmentary. I would catch pieces from conversations between my parents and relatives, but I never had a full picture. During COVID, I had the chance to interview my family. I was doing my master’s at the time, filming them and asking them to talk about their memories. I asked each of them to reconstruct their experiences step by step. My parents began recounting their lives in Qingtian, a small county in the south of China, in the 1960s, during the Cultural Revolution, and slowly pieced together their past. When I interviewed my brother, it was the first time I heard his story from his own perspective, as a complete narrative. That was very powerful for me, because before that I had never heard it told so linearly or so personally. He explained to me the whole story, and I began to get closer to him somehow during that period. This hierarchy of big brother, younger sister began to get more diffuse. He took me with his friends and it was the first time I could enter that world, around 2021. Since I saw his world, I got very shocked about the difference to my environment.
What were you so shocked about?
How different our daily lives were – our circles, our ways of having fun. He shares a background with his friends that I don’t have. Most of my friends are Catalan or Western, and that creates a very different dynamic.
Do you think that’s also because of the ten-year age gap and the fact that he grew up in China?
When I was younger, he took care of me while my parents were working, so he had more of a parental role. Because of that gap, I wasn’t really allowed into his world until much later, when he opened it to me. It was the first time I felt included, but it was also very clear that I didn’t fully belong.
How did it make you feel growing up when your brother was away?
I missed him very much because he was a reference for me. So I was very happy every time he came home. But it felt very lonely somehow, but that’s how the mind works, with the little pieces I was getting to, just constructing more.
For you, were there specific codes maybe linked to a gangster narrative, and how did they shape the way you framed the story?
The premise was very clear. The point of departure goes back to my childhood, when I used to watch gangster films with my brother. As we grew older, he became a gangster, and I became a filmmaker. That contrast became the framework of the film – an attempt to explore this why. It also raised personal questions for me. I sometimes wondered: if I had been a man, would I have followed a similar path? He was a strong reference point in my life. I developed this habit of observing him and, when he wasn’t there, imagining the fiction of his life. Those imagined stories, combined with the films we watched together, created a kind of inner mythology – an image of violence and the gangster world that existed in my mind. I think this image found its way into the film, perhaps unconsciously, as a reflection of how I perceived him and his life.
You film a lot through windows and use recurring images of looking through something. You also mentioned that the frame is sometimes slightly tilted. How does this relate to distance in the film?
At first, I thought in terms of references – directors who use this kind of framing. It felt very cinematic. When I watched those films when I was younger, I recognised a kind of gaze that feels distant but not detached. More like an observer. And I think in Asian aesthetics in general, distance is often used as a dramatic element. If I watch you cry in a close-up, it’s very intense – you dominate the frame. But if I step back and you’re crying far away and I cannot reach you, that creates another kind of feeling. It expresses a human condition – a sense of incapacity, of distance, of fate being larger than us. At first, this was very theoretical for me. But once I started filming, I realised I was intuitively choosing distance. If I got too close, it felt almost violent. I was trying to find a distance that felt fair. Later I understood that it wasn’t just about cinematic references. It’s also an emotional heritage. In Chinese culture, people rarely say «I love you.» It feels almost too direct, too sentimental. So you need something in between to express that feeling.
You mostly show the Chinese community in closed spaces. Why focus on that, and on your brother’s community specifically?
I think it comes from their reality. Most of their life happens indoors. I only realised this afterwards, when I wrote the voiceover, where I say we are hiding in warehouses. It was more like an observation in hindsight. We are always in spaces where no one can really see us. So in a way, it might be something unconscious. But it’s also a way of being invisible. And if I film mostly inside, part of the intention is also to suggest that this could be any Chinese community in any city in Europe. It doesn’t really matter where exactly you are.
Did your relationship with your brother change through filming?
This film brought us closer, more towards an equal position. I think this sister-brother role was always there. I was the director, and he was the actor; it was very difficult for me to shift the hierarchy. But at some point he was open to following whatever I was saying.
But at some point, because of the depression he had during that period, I was very close to him there, and the relationship began to change. This was the first time he was showing himself vulnerable. And I could support him somehow. Also, he began to get know my friends, my crew.
There’s a scene where your brother and his friends talk about depression. How did you approach that?
It just happened, no? He was in this high-pitched moment, and then afterwards he began to have these personal crises, these symptoms, being very anxious and nervous. We had to integrate it somehow. What emerged was quite organic. I think his friends must experience similar things, but they don’t express it in the same way. They seem more closed-off, with stronger defences.
That’s why the scene plays out like that — when my brother brings it up, the others respond almost naively, asking, «What is depression?» It has a certain tone, almost like a scene from «The Sopranos», where vulnerability is present but also resisted.
At the end of the film, the master from the temple tells you: «You will see a mountain as a mountain.» What does that mean to you?
In Zen tradition, there’s a well-known idea of three stages: first, you see a mountain as a mountain; Then, you see that it is not a mountain. And finally, you see it again as a mountain. It’s about perception and understanding. Reaching a point where you see things as they are, without projecting too much onto them. For me, making this film was an exercise in trying to see reality without judgement.
Their values are often very different from mine. For example, their idea of masculinity is very different. But then I started questioning that – why do I think my perspective is better? I was trying to find a fair gaze. To accept the distance. To accept that I don’t fully understand or belong. You don’t agree with many things, but they are what they are. They still are. That’s the reality. And there’s nothing higher than the reality. That’s the «mountain is a mountain».
Were there moments when you chose not to film?
Yes. Because there are things that cannot be filmed, to protect them. So all I could really do was shape the film through suggestion rather than showing everything directly.
Also, I sometimes feel we could have gone one step further. But with such a personal film, it’s very difficult – you know, it’s your family. It’s hard to define the limits.
What do you mean by going one step further? What would you have shown?
Nothing criminal or shocking, but more of the unspoken things. There were many moments when people didn’t want to say certain things. And that’s okay – it wasn’t anything extreme – but there was a sense that everyone was holding back a little. I was censoring myself as well. So there was this constant feeling of needing to be careful. But at some point, I felt that being a bit less careful could also have been okay – just accepting reality as it is, without judgement. Including some of those withheld moments might have made the film feel even more honest. The only real limit for me was making sure nothing would harm them – especially not in a legal sense or in a way that could cause problems for them later.
Was there a script, or was the whole process more natural?
At the beginning, there was a script – at least in a loose sense. But then reality intervened, and the script more or less disappeared. What remained was a structure I had in mind: different aspects of his life – work, nightlife, family – all intertwined. That stayed as a kind of guide, but the details depended entirely on what actually happened. I initially wrote a script mainly for the funding application. At the same time, I was already observing and taking notes for two or three years before filming. Through that process, I developed a sense of the structure I wanted. The idea was to show the different sides of his life and how they connect – work, nightlife, family and everything interwoven. It was important to me not to focus on just one aspect, like, I don’t want just to film during the night; I want to explain why the night and how it relates to the rest of his life. So acted the structure as a guide, especially when reality started to shift. But the actual scenes and developments were always shaped by what was happening in the moment.
How’s your brother and his friends now?
Some of them are still somewhere between legal and illegal. Most of them are out. They have restaurants; they’re living more normal lives. But those things are still part of their past, their heritage in a way. For some, elements of that world are still present, still ongoing in the background.
20. Mai 2026
