邻居

This film tells a story of the House of One Heart, a nursing center for mentally challenged people. The director moves to the center’s neighbourhood and records the life of the people living there. His camera becomes a mediator to help him enter this space and a friend to understand its residents. The film observes them as they deal with their symptoms with the help of medication, repress their anger for fear of being sent back to a hospital, bear with unfair payment for their work and an inability to to choose their own places to live. The director, as I, narrates in the film in the way that sounds more like a private confession rather than an explanation. This film is especially notable as it approaches the mentally challenged people not as an anonymous group but as independent individuals with their own names and pays attention to their lives and voices. It sees them not as a bunch of Alices in Wonderland but as neighbours living next door. It observes and records them closely with warm and intimate eyes.