The Rooster is Gone

Genre / Format:  Hybrid / Docu – Fiction

Running Time:  90 min

Director:  Xiaoxue Li

Production:  Nebenan Film

Country:  Germany

Locations: Germany / China / Poland 

Language:  Germen / English / Chinese / Kurdish / Russian

Status:  Post – Production

Availability:  From May 2026

Logline

Told through the eyes of a Chinese filmmaker, the film follows her move to a remote German village, where a “church cinema” draws her into an inner journey in search of a mysterious local figure.

Synopsis from the director

Five years ago, I moved with my husband from a large Chinese city to a small village in northern Germany, where my new life was shaped by isolation and cultural distance.

Everything began when I met an old man named Richard at an Easter bonfire and took him to be my first friend in the village. Soon after, together with the local pastor, I opened a “church cinema.”

Through it, I found a way into the village—until I realized that no one else seemed to know Richard, and that he had quietly vanished.

In search of him, I turned to the village archives, following a trail of clues left by migrants from different eras, and brought this inner journey—woven from fact and fiction, yet entirely true to myself—onto the screen of the “church cinema.”