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"One of Wang's most heartrending works … a portrait of a system too financially preoccupied and uncaring to support its own medical institutions." – Little White Lies
A psychiatric hospital, somewhere in south-west China. Inmates, patiently observed by the camera, walk the corridors and interact with little interference from either doctors or staff. It is a free society within a cage.
Wang Bing (Alone, MIFF 2013) is one of the great contemporary documentarians, and a passionate chronicler of life on the periphery. In ‘Til Madness Do Us Part, he turns his unflinching lens on a place where few dare to look: an institution ostensibly designed for the treatment of the mentally ill, but in reality a holding pen for misfits; all have been rejected by their society, and here, in this ward, all are equal. Built on immersive long takes, the resulting four-hour film is a powerfully moving and deeply empathetic portrait of a hidden humanity.
"A Foucauldian vision, [Wang]'s documentary lays the patient's plight and vulnerabilities bare before the camera." – The Brooklyn Rail