Present. Perfect.(HKAFF 2019)

In 2017, the Chinese government placed draconian restrictions on China’s wildly popular live-streaming platforms, affecting over 400 million active Chinese streamers. Called “anchors”, these individuals produced countless hours of streams, and director Zhu Shengze took over 800 hours of their pre-censorship footage and edited it down, focusing on selected anchors on society’s margins. She weaves streams from farmers, machinery operators, gender non-conformists, street artists, the poor and the poor-of-health into a two-hour tapestry about ordinary people broadcasting their ordinary lives to the world. What emerges is an engrossing and heartbreaking document about our still-evolving digital society, and our lack of connection in a world that, thanks to the internet, is paradoxically more connected than ever.