Rural vitalization gets silver screen treatment

Go for Rural Entrepreneurship, a documentary that touches on themes of modernization, rural vitalization, and food security, premiered on Thursday in Beijing.

The 106-minute documentary was filmed in Zengcheng district, Guangzhou, Guangdong province, and follows four young people starting their own businesses in different fields. It will be released in about 12,000 cinemas around the country on June 1.

The result of over a year of filming, the film chronicles the transformation of wasteland into farmland producing bumper harvests, of dilapidated houses into boutique agro-tourism lodgings, the evolution of family farms into rural study hubs, and the ways the film's subjects tackled typhoons and other challenges.

One of those subjects, Shen Yanfen, quit her job as an office worker in Shenzhen, Guangdong province in 2020 and returned to her hometown to take charge of her father's agricultural machine cooperative.

In recent years, she has successfully helped villagers reclaim abandoned farmland to grow rice and sell farm produce via livestreaming.

"From the earthy fragrance we know so well, new dreams and prospect have taken root and flourished," Shen said at the premiere.

Zhai Cuixia, an official from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, said at the event that she hoped the documentary would become a bridge, transmuting truths into tangible engagement and igniting a grassroots movement in which people join rural vitalization across these fertile fields of hope.