On the Bridge of Death and Life

Every day, Chen Si rides his scooter around on a bridge over the Yangtze River trying to stop potential suicides. During the past 10 years, he has saved more than 200 desperate people, many of whom come from rural areas. Some of them talk with rare candor about the problems they thought they could no longer face. It's striking that so many of them feel driven to distraction by abuses of power on the part of an employer or the government, making the immense pressure caused by unfettered economic expansion in China frighteningly palpable. As the camera follows him in his daily activities, Chen Si shares what he has learned about life and death; at least, when he's not busy pulling someone – at times quite forcefully – back from the edge. At the same time, the film paints an intimate portrait of this volunteer. Because of his own turbulent life, he takes the victims' stories so to heart that he can only lighten his mood with drink. Who will save Chen Si? (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)