‘Always’ Review: Deming Chen’s Strikingly Confident Debut From Plays Like a Long Visual Poem

variety.com:

Murtada Elfadl Gorgeously rendered in picturesque cinematography, “Always” offers a meditative and patient look into the life of an adolescent poet in rural China.

But the poetry is not limited to the protagonist’s words, which appear as intertitles throughout the film; it is also there in the images captured of him, his family, classmates and his small village and its people.

This is a confident and striking debut for filmmaker Deming Chen that should establish him as a new and vital voice in the documentary genre.

The film opens in color, then turns to black and white as if going back to a more innocent time. Later in the film, the color returns, desaturated and faint though beautiful, marking the passage of time.