Winner of the Documentary Australia Award at the 2026 Sydney Film Festival.

TIME AND TIDE explores contemporary China through the eyes of a multigenerational family navigating the pressures of familial obligation. 

Filmmaker Vee Shi’s father, a once proud and stubborn patriarch, is in poor health following a stroke. A longtime Australian resident, Vee Shi hasn’t seen his father for several years. In truth, Vee Shi has always been distant from his family. He heads to his remote hometown in Fuqing with the dual purpose of making a fiction film. But as he turns his camera on his family, including his unhappily married mother and single-mum sister, reality and fiction start to blur as generational pain and regret are exposed.

Min Nan and Mandarin language, English Subtitles