Whispers in May

A meditative-lyrical hybrid documentary about a fourteen-year-old girl living in a remote mountainous area of ​​China’s Liangshan Province. Quihio has a secret: she has just had her first period. This means it is time for the “skirt-changing” ceremony, the traditional rite of passage that marks the transition from a child to a woman, with the ensuing labor and marital obligations that the community will impose on her. Her parents are migrant workers and her grandfather has recently died. At fourteen, she is expected to take care of her younger siblings while also attending school. Tense phone conversations in which her mother scolds her for not completing her chores are a common part of her daily life, and we witness the transfer of economic and social anxiety from mother to young daughter. Quihio and her two friends are looking for a special skirt to wear during the (anticipated) transition from childhood to adulthood. A seemingly small and routine task turns into a real adventure in which time slows down, childlike expanses become vast, and the boundaries of a seemingly constraining world expand indefinitely.

An unusually poetic film on girlhood combines direct observational footage and an improvised fictional journey conceived and conducted in close collaboration with the young protagonists. Whispers in May construct a girl’s world that resists rigid social norms and the gendered reproduction of social roles. As the days pass and the landscapes change, our trio roams the mountain slopes, chasing shadows and feeding on the last moments of childhood, resisting existential predicaments, before one of them starts working in one of the nearby factories or becomes a too young a bride. In contrast to the realistic scenes, the director sporadically inserts dreamy vignettes that are permeated with folklore motifs, mysterious forest creatures and striking illustrations. The vignettes bring stimulating mystical and philosophical associations to the story of growing up. They are connected through the myth of Coqotamat, a demon who supposedly devours children and hides behind a thousand female faces; based on oral tradition passed down from generation to generation in the communities of the region. The girls’ playful journey amidst the May rustle takes us to an unknown world beyond the mountain and beyond childhood, wholeheartedly resisting the hardships of growing up and imposed (and often gender-based) duties.