The Last Tribe in China

In 2012, China launched a “poverty reduction” programme in rural areas and the traditional village of Omdian was earmarked for the development of local tourism. But what does poverty mean? The ethnic minority that lives there peacefully following its own organisation is threatened with eviction. Some of them become spokespeople for the national narrative orchestrated by the authorities, but the village head refuses to leave his house. Liu Chunyu manages to clearly capture all of the very precise local questionings and the broader cluster of opposing forces at play, while also building a twilight story that closely blends the dry irony of a situation and the depths of a human tragedy, filmed from the right distance. Florence Maillard