Faithful Correspondence

A decade ago, one would be forgiven to think ash can’t be mistaken for rain in Oregon, but the documentary Heaven Rain Flows Sweetly renders real this possibility. The debut film by Nakhi-Chinese director Shasha Li begins with fire. Wildfires that consumed parts of the western US in September 2020, its parallels with raging fires in the Amazon and Australia. The force of fire, how unforgiving it is in its wrath, then juxtaposed with the respect and deference the Nakhi, an ethnic minority in China, have for this element.

In a swift move, we are in Li’s ancestral home in Lijiang, China, and in Nakhi villages nearby in the southwestern province of Yunnan. Painterly shots of wide expanses of road and forest in the US and lush river valleys in the foothills of the Himalayas take us there. Heaven Rain Flows Sweetly moves as a circadian clock or a hand-crank music box, letting the sound of drumming, synth beats, rippling water and breathless hiking, intertwine to produce a sense of movement.

In considering how tourism has transformed Lijiang’s Old Town, which was declared a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site, the film also depicts the contrast between Indigenous ways of being and the pace of development giving way to a changing of hands when it comes to property ownership.

Water is another element that rules in the film. It is there in various states—standing water coloured by dusk, the glistening of creek water that can be taken in a leaf, the rosy, cloudy canals that show the mark of industry. In Heaven Rain Flows Sweetly, Li asks us to consider the displacement of rural life for urbanness—what it means to create a space to call ‘home’ and to be ornate, as two peonies in a garden. The camera almost turns in on itself—a thoughtful arrangement of what is natural—embodying Li and her kin’s ancestral rituals. The dexterity of the camera, charmingly unwieldy at times, creates a sense of care in its observation and prosaic vignettes.

Throughout the film, made during the pandemic, we see Li’s reflections on her uprootedness and nomadism, “worshipping at the shrine of the New World,” as she puts it, meaning in New York City. Views oscillate between a glinting NYC skyline and a quaint farmscape in southwestern Yunnan. Three languages—English, Mandarin, and Nakhi—weave together a soulful narrative about the home we try not to forget. Heaven Rain Flows Sweetly oozes candor and the sweetness of community, even in moments that eschew the familiar in favour of the distant, echoing divine.

Heaven Rain Flows Sweetly had its world premiere at DOC NYC, which ran from November 12-26, 2023.