Two Mountains Weighing Down My Chest

A 32-year-old Chinese aspiring artist, raised in Beijing in the 1990s and now living in Berlin, exists between two completely different worlds: the alternative, chaotic, and progressive scene of the German capital and the traditional, conservative, and orderly life of her family in China. Every return home forces her to redefine her identity, ambitions, and relationships. The film, with lightness and self‑irony, depicts the experience of cultural “whiplash” – the constant adjustment to conflicting norms, expectations, and values imposed by East and West. The titular “two mountains” serve as a metaphor for the weight of these opposing pressures: freedom, individualism, and artistic experimentation on one side, tradition, family, and loyalty to her roots on the other. Combining a personal perspective with a universal question of belonging, the film portrays migration not as a single act, but as an ongoing process of negotiating one’s place in a globalized yet deeply polarized world.

The film is being presented as part of the project "Cinema as a Laboratory V," co-financed by the Polish-German Cooperation Foundation.