Updated: 54 minutes ago
Bitter Sweet Ballad (2023)
Director: Liang Junjian / Tang Tao / Liu Zhangbolong
Cast: Quan Yufei / Zhang Zhanhao / Wang Luyao / Feng Xiaoyun
Genre: Documentary
Production Country/Region: Chinese Mainland
Language: Mandarin Chinese
Runtime: 108 minutes
At Beijing Dandelion Middle School, four choir students use singing to resist the instability of fate. Coming from different regions across China, they may be forced to leave school at any moment due to migration, economic hardship, or family circumstances. For them, spring resembles the drifting seeds of a dandelion — never guaranteed where they might land, nor when they might depart again.
Within the film, music becomes the only emotional anchor these teenagers can hold onto while facing an uncertain future. Their voices travel through classrooms, playgrounds, and fleeting moments of adolescence, carrying with them silent anxieties surrounding separation, movement, and growing up. Rather than portraying displacement as disappearance, the film suggests it may instead be the beginning of another spring yet to arrive.
Structured around movement and connected through song, Bitter Sweet Ballad functions like the quartet’s minuet — oscillating between lightness and melancholy. It offers the programme a brief yet luminous breath, allowing voices not yet fully heard by the world to momentarily remain suspended on screen.
Director Introduction
Liang Junjian is an associate professor and doctoral supervisor at the School of Journalism and Communication, Tsinghua University, as well as a documentary director and producer. He began creating documentaries in 2007 and served as a visiting scholar at the Department of Anthropology, University of South Carolina from 2015 to 2016. His documentary Chronicle of 2008 was shortlisted for the 2010 International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam.
Tang Tao earned his bachelor's and master's degrees from Tsinghua University and further studied Film at the University of Southern California in the United States. The short films he directed, including Poplars and Street Lamps and How to Kill Juanjuan, have won numerous awards at home and abroad.
Liu Zhangbolong graduated from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Tsinghua University, and the School of Visual Arts in New York. He currently lives and works in New York and Beijing. His works often take science as the starting point and are presented through visual forms.
Film Recommendation
With delicate and authentic shots, this film delves into the lives of these migrant children. It depicts their pursuit of music, their confusion and resolve along the journey of growth, while also laying bare the complex social realities behind their stories.
What makes this film most precious is that it never uses its lens to amplify sympathy. Instead, it invites every audience member to see the truth of life through the children's songs: growth is essentially a continual process of reconciling with partings. And resilience means recognizing the true nature of life, yet still choosing to sing an off-key song for one's dreams.
— Yang Han
Screening Info
This screening event will be held at UCL East Community Cinema, 1 Pool Street, London E2O 2AF, 21 October 2026.
Ticket link:
The screening will be followed by interview videos of the filmmkaers and the casts.
Please do not be late for the screening.
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