Film phase:Production
SYNOPSIS
Raised as a tomboy during the 1990s in China and now living in Berlin, 32-year-old Viv faces an existential crisis she didn’t know existed. In every corner of her life, nuanced clashes arise between the progressive German city and Viv’s conservative upbringing. Following her curious but clumsy exploration of gender, sexuality, and artistic identity, the film takes a witty, sharp look at what it means to feel a sense of belonging in a globalized world.
Two Mountains Weighing Down My Chest is a participant of the 2024 (Egg)celerator Lab.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Viv Li (she/her) is a Chinese filmmaker and artist based in Berlin. She is a Berlinale Talent, a Sundance Grantee, an IDFA Alumni, a Nipkow Fellow, and a Logan Fellow. Viv holds a master in Documentary Directing from DocNomads and a bachelor in Drama and Films from the University of Manchester. Born and raised in Beijing, she has spent the past 14 years living in various countries in Europe, South America, and Asia, granting her a distinct point of view on cultural and artistic boundaries.
ABOUT THE PRODUCERS
Daniela Dieterich (she/her) is based in Cologne, Germany. She has a university degree in Communications, Media, and Sound-studies and is a Sundance Grantee and a Dok.Incubator Alumna. She has worked as production manager for various short and feature films, and for film seminars at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. Since 2017, she has been working for CORSO Film, where she was a producer for Searching Eva (dir. Pia Hellenthal), which screened at Berlinale Panorama, IDFA, HOT DOCS, Sheffield DocFest, and more, and won a Special Mention at CPH:DOX and the Audience Award Athens.
Erik Winker (he/ him) has been working in the field of documentary for over 20 years and is the CEO of the production company CORSO Film. CORSO productions are shown at festivals, on TV, and in cinemas worldwide and have been awarded numerous times. Credits include the films Work Hard Play Hard, Searching Eva, Happy, Acasa my Home, A Woman Captures or Taming the Garden. Erik works as a tutor for international workshops like Dok.Incubator, Ex Oriente, ESo Doc, and Documentary Campus and is a regular member in festival and funding juries. He‘s a former chairman of the regional filmmaker’s association Filmbüro NW, a member of the German Film Academy, and a founding member of the Documentary Association of Europe. Since 2023, he’s been a professor for documentary at the University Of Applied Sciences Mainz.
ABOUT THE CO-PRODUCER
Olivia Sophie van Leeuwen (she/her) is partner and managing director at HALAL. With a Media Studies Master’s degree from the University of Amsterdam and the New York University Tisch School of the Arts, Olivia has been working with documentaries, TV series, art, and feature films for more than a decade. In 2020, Screen Daily named Olivia a “Dutch Filmmaker to Watch.”