In an isolated asylum live 12 months a year fifty men who spend their days locked in one floor. Each has been committed for different reason: they have mental problems, killed people, or have upset some local officials. But once inside, they share the same empty life, walking along the same iron wire fence courtyard, looking for comfort and human warmth.

In the fall of 2003, I randomly discovered a mental hospital near Beijing. There was nobody outside. It seemed empty. I walked alone inside it. I began to feel very strange. All the doors and the windows were closed and sealed. The walls were falling apart and all mottled. I was attracted by the strangeness there. Suddenly behind a locked door, I got myself facing a group of men. They were wearing blue and white gown. A nurse came and told me that they were the patients of the hospital. I talked with her. She said many of them have been living there for ten to twenty years. I felt something very strong towards them, which made me want to make a film. But the hospital refused to let me shoot. In 2009, I went to the hospital again. Some of the patient I had seen had passed away. So I keep thinking that I should make a film about the life of the men inside Chinese Asylum. In 2012 I went to a new mental hospital and this time they let me get inside with my camera. So I started ‘TIL MADNESS DO US PART.” There is no freedom in this hospital. But when men are locked inside a closed space, with iron wire fence and no freedom, they are capable of creating a new world and freedom between them, without morality or behavior restriction. Under the night-light, the bodies are like host, looking for their needs of love: physical or sentimental. This film approaches them at a moment where they are abandoned by their families and society. The repetition of their daily life amplifies the existence of time. And when time stops, life appears.

2013 Venice International Film Festival
2013 Toronto International Film Festival