The World Is Bright

The World Is Bright
Directed byYing Wang
Written byYing Wang
Lawrence Le Lam
Produced byYing Wang
Su Jian Ping
Jordan Paterson
CinematographyPieter Stathis
Su Jian Ping
Ying Wang
Rui Qiang Tang
Peng Yin
Edited byLawrence Le Lam
Ying Wang
Music byDaniel Ross
Production
companies
gYu Films International
Picture's Up Media
Distributed byMoving Images Distribution
Release date
  • September 29, 2019 (2019-09-29) (VIFF)
Running time
116 minutes
CountryCanada
LanguagesEnglish
Mandarin

The World Is Bright is a Canadian documentary film, directed by Ying Wang and released in 2019.[1]

The film centres on Qian Hui Deng and Xue Mei Li, a couple from China whose son Shi Ming committed suicide soon after emigrating to Canada, focusing both on their long campaign to understand the circumstances of his death and the mental health struggles often faced by immigrants due to their social, linguistic and cultural isolation from their new surroundings.[2]

The film premiered at the 2019 Vancouver International Film Festival,[1] where it won the award for best film in the Sea to Sky program.[3] It was subsequently screened at the 2020 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, where Wang won the Emerging Canadian Filmmaker award.[4]

The film received two Canadian Screen Award nomination for Best Feature Length Documentary and Best Editing in a Documentary (Lawrence Le Lam) at the 9th Canadian Screen Awards in 2021.[5]

  1. ^ a b Janet Smith, "VIFF 2019: The World Is Bright unravels a Vancouver student's mysterious death". The Georgia Straight, September 26, 2019.
  2. ^ Marsha Lederman, "The World is Bright is an intimate look at grief as parents seek justice: Filmmaker Ying Wang follows a Chinese couple for more than a decade as they try to find out how their son died in Canada". The Globe and Mail, September 26, 2019.
  3. ^ Pat Mullen, "‘Jordan River Anderson’ Named Top Canadian Doc at VIFF". Point of View, October 6, 2019.
  4. ^ Nono Shen, "Mental health documentary produced by Richmond filmmaker wins award". Richmond News, May 29, 2020.
  5. ^ Brent Furdyk, "Canadian Screen Awards Announces 2021 Film Nominations". ET Canada, March 30, 2021.