Trying to feel at home

"We want to show, when people move off the mountains, what changes they encounter in the new environment in the city, and how they deal with them," says Meng Xiao, executive director of the film.

The film mainly tells stories of Qin Meng and Yang's family. Qin loves art and the change of environment gave him more opportunities to realize his dreams. Middle-aged Yang moved with his father and son, and the film shows how the three generations faced their new life.

"When we say poverty alleviation, we usually focus on a group of people. But the influences on each individual are different. We want to see how the old father, middle-aged Yang and the young son dealt with the changes respectively, and offer abundant angles to the audience to view the whole process," says Meng.

According to Jiao Bo, general director of the film, Happy Community was more difficult to make than Beyond the Mountains, since the latter has a general storyline about the event of people moving. But the new production focuses more on people's internal struggles, which made shooting the documentary difficult.

"We didn't have a general storyline to tell this story, and people can meet various problems living in a new community. So we tried to choose some symbolic figures. Yang's father symbolizes elderly people, Yang symbolizes the middle-aged, Yang's son symbolizes children, and Qin symbolizes those young people who are not satisfied with their life," says Meng.