When a mother reveals her forty years of diaries to her estranged queer child, they embark on a journey from China to London, transforming their unspoken past into a performance.
I never imagined returning to Tengzhou, a small town in Shandong, China, after ten years in London, where I had tried to escape childhood trauma and build a new life.
I found my mother, Elien, in the middle of a divorce after twenty years in a difficult marriage, sitting among wooden boxes in a dusty room. In her hands was a box holding forty years of secret diaries and poems. Abroad, I too had kept journals to navigate depression, trauma, and my identity as a queer artist. We had lived parallel lives, both using writing as a refuge. Our diaries became our compass.
Now in her mid-fifties, she is reclaiming her agency. Her written words guide the two of us, traveling together for the first time in ten years, to places we used to visit in my youth.
Our journey culminates in London, where I invite her to visit my home. On stage, I finally express my past struggles and my search for identity through movement.
“Ma, Let’s Fly Together” uses the camera not just to document, but as an active arena to explore whether two parallel lives can reach a future of mutual acceptance.
