“I made many wishes, but none of them came true.” That line, written by a teenage girl in the remote Liangshan region of China, became the starting point for the hybrid documentary “Whisper of May,” by Emmy-nominated Chinese director Dongnan Chen (“Fourteen Pictures,” “Singing in the Wilderness,” “The Sound of Vision”). The film will have its world premiere in main competition at the Copenhagen International Film Festival. Documentary film festival also known as CPH:DOX.
The documentary, which director Chen describes as a “reluctant coming-of-age film,” follows Kihuo, a 14-year-old girl who has just experienced her first period, as she goes on a road trip with two of her closest friends. Their goal is to buy Chiefo a skirt for the traditional “skirt-changing,” a rite of passage for women of the Nuos tribe in that region of China that marks their transition into womanhood.
There, many children grow up without parents, whose parents leave for distant cities in search of work. During weekdays, they usually live at the school, with relatives and teachers filling the gap left by migrant labor. For girls like Qihuo, adolescence also brings pressures from long-standing traditions, including the possibility of arranged marriages.
“That ritual basically means that this girl is no longer part of the biological family. And although it is illegal in China, it means that they can be married off by their parents, and then the parents will receive a large dowry,” Chen explained.
She initially visited the area with no plans to shoot a film, but a teacher showed her some of the students’ assignments for their Chinese class. Some imagined living in a dark basement in a big city and dying unnoticed, while others dreamed of being chased from Liangshan to Paris by suitors in luxury cars. But Chen was hooked when he read what Chifuo had written, and was immediately drawn into the world and imagination of a teenager.
Filmed over the course of about a month in the spring of 2022, “Whispers in May” was created without a traditional script, but director Cheng approached the production with a clear conceptual framework. In other words, the girls’ journey itself shapes the film.
“It’s a very simple but very powerful concept to me: I’m on a road trip with my girls,” Chen said. “There’s a lot of spontaneity, but there’s also a lot of preparation.”
The film unfolds through poetic and carefully constructed images of girls traveling through a mountainous region. According to Chen, this environment reflects the girls’ inner worlds, capturing the fragile moment of childhood before adulthood.
“Mountains echo their energy, and this unchecked energy is removed from the noise of social norms, expectations, and community,” she said.
However, this landscape also has a more complex meaning.
“It’s not just beauty. Those mountains also have weight. They protect their purity, but at the same time they isolate them. Mountains carry the traditions and norms of local communities, which makes it a very difficult path for them to walk into the outside world.”
The director made deliberate aesthetic choices to distance himself from the graphic visual style associated with earlier waves of Chinese independent documentaries. For Chen, beauty becomes a way to resist reductive portrayals of communities defined by poverty.
“I always think beauty is simple but so important,” she said. “In the 90s and early 2000s, many independent documentaries in China preferred to use very grainy images.
“It’s a political stance and an attitude that separates you from the mainstream,” she continued.
“I photograph mostly people who live on the margins of society, and I feel that images are very important to make them grand and give them grace. It’s a way of resistance. I don’t want to make them look small. I don’t want a place to be labeled as poor by showing a crude image.”
Beyond its specific setting, Chen says her films ultimately reflect universal experiences.
“The intention is to meet this girl at a special moment between girlhood and womanhood, which is a very universal experience: the erasure of childhood,” she said.
The film also contributed to a broader consideration of the relationship between filmmaker and subject.
Chen told Variety that he is currently in early development of a new project that will explore the complex intimacy between observer and observed in a hybrid film that mixes reality and fiction.
“Whispers in May” was produced by Jia Zhao and Kay Xu through Muyi Film and Tail Bite Tail Films. The film was a rough cut project at CPH:DOX in 2025 and received support from IDFA Bertha Foundation, Dutch Film Fund, Swedish Film Institute, Field of Vision, and others.
“Whispers in May” will have its world premiere at the main competition at CPH:DOX on March 15th. The festival runs until March 22nd in Copenhagen.
