“Shengze Zhu’s Rotterdam Film Festival Tiger Award winner looks at the culture of live-streaming in China … and raises important questions about the politics of viewership, the documentary form’s complex ties to reality and about human relationships in a digitally connected world.” – CineVue

In 2017, over 400 million everyday Chinese “anchors” were regularly sharing every moment from their “studios” – homes, offices, classrooms etc – through video live-streaming sites. Then the government began shutting it all down.

Composed entirely from footage sifted out of hundreds of hours of pre-censorship streams, Present.Perfect is both a time capsule from another era while also being a remarkably pertinent commentary on contemporary Chinese society. Whittling down to focus on 12 anchors over ten months, Zhu unearths an oft-unseen side of the country. Eschewing big-name influencers, she instead sought out the street performers and crane operators, the factory workers and farmers, the gender non-conforming and differently abled. This voyeuristic view captures the humour and heartbreak of ordinary human lives. As it shines a spotlight on the creeping loneliness and desire for connection in the world’s most populous nation, it forces us to ask troubling questions about not only about those who streamed to be seen, but about the very nature of digital connectivity.

“A daring effort that challenges the boundaries of documentation by re-defining the found footage genre … Present. Perfect. offers a stark social commentary on loneliness, voyeurism and the desire for genuine human connection through a screen by China’s unseen and neglected.” – Screen Anarchy