Films

In 2008, local authorities evicted 2,000 villagers from Guanzhou, a river island in Southern China, to make way for new urban planning projects. In spite of the demolition of their houses and police pressure, a handful of inhabitants returned to the island. For seven years, Boris Svartzman filmed their battle to save their ancestral land, from the ruins of the village where nature is slowly reasserting itself, to the worksites of the mega city which inexorably advances towards them. Will they share the same fate of five million Chinese peasants expropriated yearly?