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Erica Xia-Hou, China 2025
Written, directed, and edited by filmmaker and actress Erica Xia-Hou is the story of a devoted elderly married couple’s togetherness slowly coming to an end in BANR. In her first directorial debut, Xia-Hou chooses a special type of storytelling of a love that endures all things including Alzheimer’s and death.
Xia-Hou shoots her entire film in China with non-professional actors using a real nursing home for the film’s location to give the story a documentary-style realism. Xia-Hou felt it important for the film to have an intimate portrayal showcasing, “emotional complexities of aging, resilience of the human spirit, and the subtle yet profound expressions of love within traditional Asian families.”
Xia-Hou shares, “I want the audience to take away from BANR the power of love and the profound connection between memory and emotion.” Adding, “At the core, the film explores our universal need for emotional connection, the longing to be loved, remembered, and anchored to someone, even in the face of loss and fading memories. Memory defines us, but love is what keeps us alive.”
After several decades sharing a loving and committed marriage, a husband and wife enter their twilight years to face the unimaginable and form of loss in BANR. The wife battles the onset of Alzheimers leaving her husband to feel the pain of slowly losing his best friend. The husband suddenly dies from a heart attack and a double whammy for the wife occurs…the loss of her longtime lover and the loss of her memory. Now, the wife must confront the debilitating disease of memory loss without him, OR?
An amazing act of love from her husband happens. Prior to his passing, he began to put a portion of their lives into video, especially of himself so that if anything ever happened to him, a caregiver could help her visually see and hear her husband regularly from his home-made video clips. He hoped that her memory of him using visuals of his presence (face or body) would be a comfort to her in his actual absence. Xia-Hou says, “This, to me, is the power of love—disease may erode the brain and body, but it cannot erase the memory of love.” BANR gives life to a relatable narrative and encourages one to creatively discover what power of love relates to your declining loved ones.
