Moving into final stretch of the fest, day 8 was curiously bookended by the notion of the birthplace – either where a person is born or where an idea moves from seedling into full bloom. With Too Late to Die Young, Dominga Sotomayor (winner of the Best Director at Locarno) purposefully decodes the intersecting worlds of children and adult in one specific dwelling and she carves out a text that explores a physical and psychological space. Prior to sitting down with the filmmaker, she answered some press conference Qs from moderator and one of the fest programmers Diego Lerer.
At the midway mark in the day, the festival proposed a Masterclass with Abderrahmane Sissako (here you see him chatting with international press coordinator Jean Charles Canu) followed by a field trip accompanying Jia Zhangke to his birthplace. Th tour of Fengyang brought a caravan of festival guests to the Fenjiu factory — home of the deceptively tasty and potent Chinese liquor (an instant favorite among journalists) and a dinner at the filmmaker’s Mountains May Depart themed restaurant (the walls are adorned with posters of multiple territories, Cannes premiere pics and stills from the film) with a fireworks display for dessert.
