Question of life and death

Future plan

Shooting The Choice made Gu start to look at her own family. She began a 10-year recording project of her mother's family last year. Every year, there is a topic for the 10 families to talk about. This year's topic was marriage.

Last year, during her quarantine period around Spring Festival due to the outbreak of COVID-19, Gu was anxious and wanted to do something, which reminded her of The Decameron by the 14th century Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio. In the book, 10 people tell stories when they shelter in a secluded villa outside Florence in order to escape the plague afflicting the city.

Letting each family member read a piece of news, she recorded their appearance and voice during their home quarantine period last year, which opened her 10-year project.

"They have been honest to me in front of the camera. Before the shooting, I didn't realize how little I knew about them. Their answers really surprised me, which is also the charm of a documentary-the unpredictability and complexity," Gu says.

Although shooting independent films does not make her life better, financially, she has been happy about her life, but still trying to make some money.

Having received her master's in arts from the Communication University of China in Beijing, she is also involved in film-related activities such as the Inner Mongolia Youth Film Week as co-founder, the Fitzcarraldo Film Festival as a curator and the First International Film Festival Xining or the Grassland Film Workshop as a planner.

The Choice has an emotional subject that touches almost everyone. At the end of the interview in a cozy cafe in Song Zhuang, a small town on the outskirts of Beijing, a woman dressed in pink in her 30s, who had overheard the conversation, politely interrupted and shared her own, forthright, opinions on marriage and family.

The aunt in the documentary sadly passed away a week after the family meeting.