Arts & culture

Shanghai Waiting for Paradise

In 2001, just months before the attacks in the United States, the Wang family—three generations living under one roof in the heart of old historical Shanghai—learns that their house is set to be demolished. Sylvie Levey decides to film their story until the inevitable engulfment. "Shanghai, Waiting for Paradise" offers an immersion into Chinese soil.

For five years, intermittently, the director shares the daily life of the Wangs in their 18m² home. Their impressions and protests about popular China and the rest of the world unfold through the lens of global events: Bush and bin Laden, communist propaganda, the one-child policy and abortions, the pride of hosting the 2008 Olympics despite everything, and the overarching sense of fatalism.

This film will also explore, above all, the fracturing of families as globalization arrives violently. In short, it is an intimate story about a transitioning China, glimpsed through the lens of the Wangs’ lives, imbued with a universal dimension.

Type (Documentaire / Documentaire fiction / Série documentaire)DocumentaryGenre en anglaisArt & cultureDirected by Sylvie LeveySupported by ANGOA, CNC, Procirep, SCAMDistributed by ADAV, Artline FilmsFestival(s)Sélection officielle, World Film Festival of Bangkok (2009) / Sélection officielle, Festival International du Film d’Istanbul (2007) / Sélection officielle, Festival des Étonnants Voyageurs (Saint-Malo, 2008)Year2007Duration2x52min / 90min

In the back alleys of Shanghai, the life of the Wang family is captured over four years. Three generations under one roof, tenants of a decaying piece of a house on Fang Bang Street—one of the city’s oldest thoroughfares. A world within a world. An enclave of centuries piled upon each other, miraculously spared in the heart of a futuristic Shanghai, eager to catch up with lost time, without much sentiment…

The Wang’s house, along with their street, is condemned to disappear under the bulldozers of modernity at any moment. When exactly? They do not know. They wait. “Shanghai, Waiting for Paradise” tells this life story—of being “in-between,” of existing in a “liminal world” on borrowed time. It is a reflection on modernity and globalization, on what we risk losing or gaining in the process…

Press coverage

This intimate story of the impending expropriation of the Wangs, along with the hopes and heartaches it generates, takes on a historical dimension for what it reveals about the evolution of China over the past half-century. It also embodies a universal aspect by highlighting the misunderstandings between generations, wherever they may be in the world.

Le Monde

Based in Shanghai for ten years, Sylvie Levey has produced several high-quality documentaries, including The Strange Fate of Colonel Jin Xing. This new work is no exception: a thoroughly accomplished documentary.

Le Nouvel Observateur

An enlightening look at the way of life and mental representations of today's China.

Les Inrockuptibles

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