Autumn's End
''All I have to do is calm down and relieve my stress.''
Brook Yanlin is an artist working across mixed media, music, and moving image. Autumn’s End marks his first venture into filmmaking. The film portrays a young man seeking inner balance through the ritual burning of paper — an act that becomes a quiet release from anxiety, pressure, and helplessness. Through restrained images, an original soundscape, and a slow poetic rhythm, the film turns anxiety, ritual, and silence into an emotional landscape.
The work draws inspiration from China’s COVID-19 lockdown in 2022, the pressure of the national postgraduate entrance examination, and the local tradition of burning paper offerings for ancestors in his hometown. The ritual becomes a fragile way of approaching what cannot be spoken. Created as a response to his own internal unrest caused by social tension, the film offers a quiet gesture of resistance. Yanlin hopes that viewers may find in it their own sense of serenity and freedom.