Past screening

Eternal Spring

Directed by: Jason Loftus
Runtime: 1hr 26min Year: 2022
Watch trailer

Details

Directed by: Jason Loftus
Runtime: 1hr 26min Year: 2022
Country: Canada
Topics: Sociopolitical

Confronted with government denunciations and human rights violations against their spiritual practice, a group of Chinese activists executes a bold and perilous plan to hack into state television.

In March 2002, a state TV signal in China is hacked by members of the banned spiritual group Falun Gong. Their goal is to counter the government narrative about their practice. In the aftermath, police raids sweep Changchun City, and comic book illustrator Daxiong (Justice League, Star Wars), a Falun Gong practitioner, is forced to flee. He arrives in North America, blaming the hijacking for worsening a violent repression.

But his views are challenged when he meets the lone surviving participant to have escaped China, now living in Seoul, South Korea.Combining present-day footage with 3D animation inspired by Daxiong’s art, Eternal Spring (長春) retraces the event on its 20th anniversary, and brings to life an unprecedented story of defiance, harrowing eyewitness accounts of persecution, and an exhilarating tale of determination to speak up for political and religious freedoms, no matter the cost.