Honestly, most people who sit down to watch the Those Who Remain documentary (the 2019 film by director Libbie D. Cohn) think they’re getting a standard historical retrospective. They expect talking heads. They expect dry archival footage of the 1960s. Instead, what you get is a punch to the gut about the cost of staying behind. It’s a film that focuses on the Chinese Cultural Revolution, but it does so through such a narrow, intimate lens that it feels almost claustrophobic.
The film isn't just about politics. It’s about the soul of a landscape.
When we talk about "Those Who Remain," we aren't just talking about a title. We are talking about the survivors. Specifically, the film tracks the echoes of the "Down to the Countryside" Movement. This was a period where millions of "sent-down" urban youths were shipped off to the rural hinterlands to be "re-educated" by the peasantry. Most eventually went home. Some didn't. Some stayed. Some remained in the dirt and the isolation of places like Shaanxi province for fifty years.
What the Those Who Remain Documentary Actually Shows
You’ve probably seen documentaries that try to cover an entire war or a whole regime change. This one doesn't do that. It focuses on the village of Fengjiagou. It’s quiet there.
The cinematography by J.P. Sniadecki is deliberate. Long takes. You see the dust. You see the way the light hits the side of a cave dwelling. This isn't "fast-paced" entertainment. It’s an observational piece that forces you to sit with the characters in their old age. These aren't people looking for sympathy; they are people who have simply endured.
The film explores the tension between the "sent-down" youth who stayed and the local villagers. It’s a messy dynamic. You’d think fifty years would erase the distinction between an outsider and a local, but the Those Who Remain documentary shows that the divide is often permanent. There is a specific kind of melancholy in watching an elderly man, once a bright-eyed student from the city, now tending to goats in a landscape that never truly claimed him as its own.
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The Problem With Historical Memory
Why does this matter now? Because memory is fickle.
In modern China, the narrative of the Cultural Revolution is... complicated. It's often glossed over or framed in very specific, nationalist terms. Cohn’s documentary does something different. It ignores the grand political speeches and focuses on the mundane tasks of survival. This is "slow cinema" at its most effective. You watch a man cook. You watch a woman walk across a barren hill.
There’s a misconception that these people "failed" because they didn't go back to the cities when the policies changed in the late 70s. The film pushes back on that. For many, there was no home to go back to. Or perhaps the rural life had fundamentally broken their ability to function in a modernizing urban environment. They became ghosts of a previous era while still very much alive.
Comparing the "Sent-Down" Experience
If you look at other films or literature on this topic—think Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress—there’s often a romanticism attached to the struggle. The Those Who Remain documentary strips that away.
- No background music: The soundscape is just the wind and the crackle of fire.
- The subjects don't give "interviews." They just exist.
- It highlights the physical toll of decades of manual labor on bodies that weren't built for it.
The film is a collaborative effort between the director and the subjects. It doesn't feel like a Westerner looking in with a "savior" lens. It feels like an invitation to witness.
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Why You Can’t Find It on Every Streaming Platform
This is where it gets frustrating for the average viewer. This isn't a Netflix-original-style production. It’s an independent film that circulated through festivals like the True/False Film Fest and the New York Film Festival. Finding a way to watch the Those Who Remain documentary often requires looking toward educational distributors or specific indie platforms like MUBI or Ovid.tv.
The scarcity of the film almost mirrors the isolation of the people it depicts. It's a niche piece of art, but for anyone interested in the intersection of Chinese history and human resilience, it is essential.
The Artistic Choices of Libbie D. Cohn
Libbie D. Cohn has a background that bridges the gap between anthropology and filmmaking. This is evident in every frame. The film doesn't use a narrator. There’s no "voice of God" telling you how to feel or what the historical context is. You are expected to know, or at least to feel, the weight of the past.
Some critics argued the film was too slow. They aren't entirely wrong. If you’re used to TikTok-length attention spans, a ten-minute shot of a mountain might feel like an eternity. But that's the point. The film is trying to replicate the pacing of life in Fengjiagou. Time moves differently when you’ve been in the same spot for half a century.
Impact and Legacy of the Work
The documentary serves as a vital archive. The generation it chronicles is disappearing. The cave dwellings are collapsing. The "sent-down" youth are now in their 70s and 80s. When they pass, the living memory of that specific, weird, painful social experiment goes with them.
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Cohn and Sniadecki aren't just making a movie; they are preserving a testimony. It’s a testimony of the "left-behinds." In a world obsessed with progress and "The Chinese Dream," this film looks at the people the dream forgot.
Practical Steps for Engaging with this History
If you've watched the film or are planning to, don't just stop at the credits. The context makes the experience much richer.
- Read up on the "Down to the Countryside" Movement. Understanding the scale—roughly 17 million youths—is mind-boggling.
- Look into the "Harvard Sensory Media Lab." This is where Sniadecki and other similar filmmakers developed this style of "sensory ethnography." It explains why the film looks and sounds the way it does.
- Check out "Up the Yangtze" or "Last Train Home." These are other documentaries that deal with the human cost of China's rapid transformation. They provide a "future-looking" contrast to the "past-anchored" reality of the Those Who Remain documentary.
- Find the director's notes. Libbie D. Cohn has spoken in various interviews about the years spent building trust with the villagers. That trust is the only reason the footage feels so intimate and unforced.
The reality is that we often view history as a series of dates and names. We forget that history is actually just a bunch of people who got stuck in a moment and never got out. This film ensures that those who remained are at least seen, even if they can never truly be understood by those of us living in the comfort of the modern world. It’s a haunting piece of work that lingers long after the screen goes black.
To truly appreciate the film, look for screenings through the Cinema Guild or university film departments. It is a piece of media that demands your full attention, away from the distractions of a second screen. Watching it is an act of empathy.