Followed by a Q+A with filmmaker ZHUANG Wei.

This film is part of a three-part series presenting documentaries from China’s Caochangdi Workstation, a collective of documentary filmmakers and performance artists whose work explores memory, history, and everyday life through long-term, participatory projects.

Director’s Statement: “Returning to the unfamiliar Chaoshan homeland to live, I encountered my grand-uncle Ajun, who had returned from Cambodia. Carrying stories of surviving the Khmer Rouge, he stirred my life as I tried to become a witness.”

About the director: ZHUANG Wei, born in 1999, is a documentary filmmaker and freelance artist from Chaoshan, Guangdong. She engages in artistic practices across different mediums that intervene in society. In 2021, she joined the “Folk Memory Project” at Caochangdi Workstation, where she created the feature-length documentaries Zhuang Wei’s Mouth (2024) and Zhuang Wei’s Witness: Return of the Survivor (2026). She is now processing her long-term filming in the ancestral Wushi Village.

Zhuang Wei’s Witness: Return of the Survivor (ZHUANG Wei, 2026, 89 min, China, Teochew dialect w/ English subtitles)