This work emerges from my years of living in Beijing, where survival often requires more than one face. I began to notice that every person seems to carry three layers of self: the one shown to the city, the one hidden beneath exhaustion and fear, and the one fractured by uncertain futures. These observations became the foundation of this film.
The narrative unfolds in three strata.
The first layer, told in forward motion, follows the visible life of people in Beijing — their labor, routines, gestures of endurance — a surface realism shaped by speed and necessity.
The second layer, moving in reverse, traces an inward collapse: my own psychological entanglements, the contradictions of belonging, and the silent weight of self-erasure that accompanies urban survival.
The third layer fractures into nonlinear shards, revealing a speculative future composed of memory glitches, temporal dislocations, and emotional residues — a future that arrives broken, before it can be imagined whole.
Together, the three layers form a portrait of the simulated self: a being stretched between social masks, personal struggle, and the unresolved horizon ahead. In this film, Beijing becomes not just a city but a machine of faces — producing, consuming, and splintering identity, while each individual learns to survive in the blur between who they are, who they fear becoming, and who they might never reach.
The narrative unfolds in three strata.
The first layer, told in forward motion, follows the visible life of people in Beijing — their labor, routines, gestures of endurance — a surface realism shaped by speed and necessity.
The second layer, moving in reverse, traces an inward collapse: my own psychological entanglements, the contradictions of belonging, and the silent weight of self-erasure that accompanies urban survival.
The third layer fractures into nonlinear shards, revealing a speculative future composed of memory glitches, temporal dislocations, and emotional residues — a future that arrives broken, before it can be imagined whole.
Together, the three layers form a portrait of the simulated self: a being stretched between social masks, personal struggle, and the unresolved horizon ahead. In this film, Beijing becomes not just a city but a machine of faces — producing, consuming, and splintering identity, while each individual learns to survive in the blur between who they are, who they fear becoming, and who they might never reach.
Created by LYCHEN(YUCHENLI), 2023
Beijing, China
Beijing, China
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