Nuit de Chine

Night in China, a documentary by Ju An-Qi, was broadcast on Finnish television a few months ago. I must say, it's one of the better documentaries I've seen. The concept of the film may not seem very intriguing at first; the director has simply chosen to film some people at night, somewhere in China. But the result is nothing short of stunning. There is the couple living in a crammed apartment. He is a shoe-repairer, while she works in a Karaoke bar. They talk about day-to-day life. Getting by somehow. There is the woman who works in a place that takes care of cats. We see another woman talking about her job, cleaning two streets in the middle of the night. What caught my attention was not only the atmosphere of the film (for some reason I was thinking of Jarmusch and Night on Earth) but also the stories the people of the film were telling. They all appeared very real to me and the lack of a coherent "plot" connecting the different stories was, in my opinion, no problem at all