The Land In Between

Chris Berry

The film combines control of time with formal invention, opens up a place and a people few of us know, and takes on a social question of real weight. It signals that the director is an outsider with almost no connection to the Tajik village in Xinjiang she is visiting. As she tries to speak with the villagers in Mandarin and in Tajik, she comes to realise that the youngest generation may not understand Tajik at all — that they have to “write letters” through their parents in order to reach their grandparents. The experience is rendered poetically: the use of subtitles, and the deft cutting of key moments and scenes, let us feel the director arriving at her realisation.