Architecture on Film: Merry Christmas, Yiwu [UK Premiere] + Q&A

We are delighted that this screening will be followed by a conversation with director Mladen Kovačević.

MERRY CHRISTMAS, YIWU [UK Premiere]
(Mladen Kovačević, Sweden, Serbia, France, Germany, Belgium, Qatar, 2020, 94 mins)

With 600 dedicated festive factories, Yiwu, China, fabricates Christmas for the world. Following the daily lives of several workers, a delicate, human film looks beyond the tinsel and glitter, into the ‘Chinese Dream’.

With beautiful images and cinematographic flair, the film weaves its non-fiction content into the form and feel of subtle, naturalistic fiction, intimately following its protagonists as they pursue their labour, lives and aspirations – at the factory, at leisure and at home – within a city that produces two thirds of the world’s Christmas decorations.

As baubles are bagged, reindeer stuffed and pom-poms placed on Santa hats, the film intimately observes the dance of the global and the local, capitalism and Communism, tradition and modernity in today’s China.

A portrait of transforming socio-economic realities, and the export and import of both goods and ideas, with the city of Yiwu offering a subject, symbol and setting, within which individual lives unfold.