Separated

Logline

Due to regulations against the Covid-19 outbreak, three of my Chinese classmates found themselves stuck in London. I started documenting our struggles in the separated world, where friendship became our only comfort in the most challenging of times.

Synopsis

In September 2019, I moved from Armenia to the UK to study documentary filmmaking at UCL. The spread of Covid-19 changed everyone’s plans. By the end of March 2020, three of my Chinese classmates - Daishan, Fan, and Frank, found themselves stuck in London because of the so-called five-one policy adopted by their country putting strict limitations on the number of flights from foreign countries to China. With the first flight cancelled, Fan was deprived of the chance to follow the initial idea of his graduation film, Frank was forced to stay separated from his girlfriend, while Daishan did not give up hope to unite with her family. In mid-May, their second chance came. During their goodbye dinner, the fun of making dumplings was followed by an emotional conversation about the saddest goodbyes in our lives. Sitting on the bed in my tiny room I got a message from Frank saying this flight got cancelled. More cancellations were to follow.

With every new ticket, my classmates regained the hope to get back home. With every cancelled one, the vision of the film got more obscure. On top of this, Fan and Daishan faced discrimination and were attacked on the street for their Asian appearance. The screening of the first cut of our graduation films followed by a discussion on the zoom call amended the situation: Daishan collapsed and found the footage a “reflection on how friendship can support in difficult times”. Each time I travelled to film my classmates, my camera caught my reflection in the window of awkwardly emptied train cars. Meanwhile, I was preparing myself for the next challenging scene. At the end of the day, documenting friends’ lives was a much harder challenge than one could imagine. Not to speak of the hardship of filming your own life, as well. After the six-month-long struggle, they found their way back home. Then war erupted in my country. ‘Separated’ is Daishan’s definition of the situation we all went through together within five months, from May till September.

Producer’s note

I started my project “Separated” as a short graduation documentary film at UCL in 2020. However, instead of the planned one-month-long production period, the shooting process lasted for about six months. The huge amount of footage became one of the biggest challenges I had to deal with within the framework of this project. At the same time, I believe the variety of the footage turned out to be a strength rather than a weakness for my film. Editing the film in autumn 2020, when the war erupted in my country, was another challenge for me. While I managed to complete the short version of the film as a graduation project; I returned to Armenia intending to continue working on the editing and complete it as a feature-length documentary film. Exploring a universal and up-to-date issue, the film has the potential to reach out to the citizens of any country in the world. Interestingly, Daishan, one of the main characters, now works for a Chinese film festival. She said: “Once finished, the film needs to reach the audience in China, too, since very few people had an idea about the reasons many Chinese students struggled to get back home.