For an ambitious teen, jobs are hard to come by in rural China. So 17-year-old Ying Ling finds herself in Hunan, training as a mortician. British documentarist Carol Salter's camera is with her all the way in this intimate portrait, as much a coming-of-age tale as an observational study of a workplace. The lively teen has to make the best of it as she trains on mannequins before washing and preparing the deceased for real.
This involving study gets us onside as Ling grapples with the major questions in life and emerges stronger for it. Modest but potent filmmaking.
