Sunset Screenings | This June, Rediscover the Table Through Four Films
Where do our three daily meals come from?
Some race against the clock through wind and rain to deliver takeaways;
Some tend a single rice landrace in mountain terraces;
Some have grazed their herds across the grasslands for generations,
yet find themselves powerless against ever-falling cattle and sheep prices;
And others, too, use microbes and time
to turn everyday ingredients into fermented foods.
We eat every day, yet rarely get to see the stories of land and labour behind our food.
This June, Foodthink invites you to the shores of Tuanjie Lake to watch four films about food and labour in the gentle breeze of an early-summer evening: Another Day Full of Hope, Asking the Rice, Whose Table, Whose Pasture, and A Journey of Fermentation. After each screening, we will invite the directors, protagonists and activists to join us for a conversation about the stories beyond the film.
From delivery riders to rice farmers, from herders to fermentation artisans, we hope that through film we can together rediscover the people who sustain our tables, and reflect once more: Where does today’s food come from? Who produces it? Who bears its cost? And how are we, as consumers, connected to all of this?
Food & Farming Mini Film Festival
Sunset Screenings
📅 Time: Every Tuesday in June, 19:30 (2, 9, 16 and 23 June)
📍 Location: Tuanjie Lake · Mix Island Sicily Village
🚇 Public transport: Tuanjie Lake Metro Station, Exit B (Northeast)
🚗 Driving directions: Dongfeng Sports Park
◉ The screening venue.
🎬 Tonight at 19:30 (2 June), the Food & Farming Mini Film Festival opens! The first screening is Another Day Full of Hope, winner of the Best Small and Medium-Budget Feature Film at the 37th Golden Rooster Awards. Starting from a car accident, the film invites us to re-examine the realities of delivery riders, platform algorithms and labour in urban life. Come take your seats on time — a free conversation follows the screening.
◉ A still from Another Day Full of Hope. The film unfolds from a car accident: a delivery platform’s algorithm engineer runs over one of his own company’s riders, triggering a crisis in two households from different social strata.
Browse the market after work,
then catch a film
Before every screening (16:00–19:00), our sister organisation, the Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market, will host the “Tuanjie Who? Pop-Up Market” at the same location. Can’t drag yourself out of bed at weekends to visit the market? Want to pick up some fresh vegetables and good ingredients on the way home from work? This time, we’ve brought the market to a weekday evening. Alongside delicious produce, there are plenty more activities to discover. For details, see “Tuanjie Lake‼️ Next Tuesday‼️ The Farmers’ Market Has Landed🥕”.
Come after work to browse the stalls, chat with the vendors, pick a few favourites, and settle in for a sunset film together. May the Tuesday evenings of this summer become your moment to meet the people behind food and the land they tend.
Full Screening Schedule
2 June Another Day Full of Hope
Liu Taifeng | Drama | 2024 | 133 min | Starring: Song Ningfeng, Zhang Xinyi, Guo Keyu
🏆 Best Small and Medium-Budget Feature Film, 37th Golden Rooster Awards
A car accident, redundancy, unemployment and family pressures strike all at once, plunging the life of Wei Li (Song Ningfeng), a senior executive at a delivery platform, into chaos. In a fateful moment, he accidentally runs over one of his own company’s time-pressured delivery riders. In the ensuing blame game over the accident, facing the dual scrutiny of the law and human conscience, Wei Li begins to question the values he once held unshakeable, and the truth hidden beneath the relentless flow of algorithms starts to reveal its grim face…
The film turns its lens on workers in the platform economy, peeling back the complex entanglement of algorithms, efficiency and humanity through a single accident. When “on-time delivery” is taken for granted, do we see the people running the streets?
📌 Free post-screening conversation for this session
9 June Asking the Rice
Wang Jue | Documentary | 2023 | 54 min
🏆 Silver Award for Permanent Collection, 5th China Ethnographic Documentary Academic Biennale
China is the country of origin of rice, and Yunnan is one of the earliest regions to domesticate it. In 2004, the environmental organisation Greenpeace handed cameras to five ethnic-minority rice farmers, producing the photo book The Road of Rice. Over the following decade, four of those five farmer-photographers gave up growing rice. Asking the Rice centres on the question “Who grows our rice?”, returning to the mountains of southwest China through long-term anthropological observation to document the changes unfolding in rural communities under the impact of the market economy: traditional agricultural wisdom is fading, land and livelihoods are under threat, and precious local rice landraces are disappearing.
Through the life stories of five rice farmers, the film bears witness to a decade of change in the production methods, ways of life and cultural traditions of rural southwest China. Following the film’s threads of time and geography, we are invited to reflect anew on the relationships between food, the environment and rural communities — and how they shape every one of our lives.
– Post-screening Guests –
Wang Jue
A graduate of the Beijing Film Academy, she works on public engagement and cultural projects at an environmental organisation, with a long-standing focus on agriculture, environment and rural issues.
16 June Whose Table, Whose Pasture
Jiao Xiaofang, Qiong Wu Danzin | Documentary | 2025 | 60 min
🏆 Selected for the 5th World Nomad Film Festival and the 6th China Ethnographic Documentary Film Festival
In the pastoral areas around Qinghai Lake, a flood of imported frozen beef and lamb has entered the market, with cheap cuts relentlessly undermining the local livestock industry.
Supported by Foodthink’s Lianhe Creative Programme, the directors went deep into frozen wholesale markets, cold-chain warehouses, herder households, butcher shops and fattening farms, documenting the changes taking place behind the imported meat trade: falling purchase prices for cattle and sheep, dwindling herders’ incomes, mounting loan pressures, and ever-harder days for local meat traders. When we reach for a cheaper cut of beef or lamb at the supermarket, who at the other end of the global trade chain is bearing the cost?
This year coincides with the UN’s International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists, and through this film we hope to give more people a clearer picture of the real conditions facing grasslands and herders.
– Post-screening Guest –
Dolan (TBC)
Originally from the Ujimqin Grassland in Inner Mongolia, she currently serves as deputy chair of the Haragobi Herders’ Cooperative, and has long worked to connect traditional pastoral lamb directly with consumers.
23 June The Fermentation Journey
Sandor Katz | Documentary | 2017 | 96 min
◉ Katz, thrilled to be permitted to stir the seven-year doubanjiang. Image: The Fermentation Journey, Episode 2, still frame
If you are a fan of kombucha, sourdough, pickled vegetables, natto or rice wine, chances are you have heard of Sandor Katz, author of The Art of Fermentation.
In 2016, Katz – widely regarded as a leading figure of the modern fermentation movement – travelled to southwest China, following the trail of fermented foods. Sichuan paocai, Dong rice wine-cured fish, Guizhou hairy tofu, Pixian doubanjiang… The camera captures not only the craft behind these ferments but also the ways in which people across different regions preserve food, carry forward their culture and create flavour in partnership with microbes.
For fermentation enthusiasts, this is a journey of flavour that crosses regions and cultures; for anyone who loves food, it is also an opportunity to rediscover the wisdom of tradition.
– Post-screening Guests –
Two fermentation practitioners (TBC)
By the time the film ends, night will have fallen. But perhaps the conversation about food is only just beginning.
This summer, we want to spend four evenings talking about the things that sit at the very heart of every table: labour, land, grain, pasture, the market, and the people behind the food.
Bring friends, family and a little curiosity, and join us for the market, the films and the evening breeze as we rediscover our table together.
Weather Advisory
According to warnings issued by Beijing’s meteorological authorities, thunderstorms and brief spells of strong winds, among other severe convective weather, are possible tonight. If you are planning to attend, please keep an eye on the forecast, bring rain gear and travel safely.
This is an outdoor screening. Should the wind and rain prove too heavy, or the weather otherwise unsuitable, we will adjust or cancel the event as necessary and notify everyone in our community group as soon as possible.
📢 Scan the QR code below to join the updates group and stay informed about screenings
Here’s hoping the weather cooperates
And we look forward to meeting you tonight by the shores of Tuanjie Lake
Editor: Y L
Layout: Sanbai