A Disappearance Foretold (2008)

A film about a popular neighbourhood in Beijing, and what happened there in relation to the 2008 Olympic Games. Qianmen is a popular neighbourhood in the very heart of Beijing, just south of the Tiananmen Square. In the perspective of the 2008 Olympic Games, the city decided that the six hundred years old neighbourhood has to be “rehabilitated”. It is now in the line of fire of the promoters, and the 80000 people living there are facing drastic (and dramatic) changes. The film follows the rapidly changing life in the neighbourhood for more than a year and a half, from one reality to another, completely different one. Little by little, fragment per fragment, the film is drawing a portrait of a neighbourhood, recording memory of a soon disappearing reality. A story of China today.