Jia Zhangke, one of China’s most celebrated filmmakers, made this short film commissioned by Greenpeace East Asia tackling the health effects of air pollution on Chinese families in Northeast China, a region frequently blanketed in dangerous levels of smog. ‘Smog Journeys’ traces two families from two different backgrounds: one is a mining family in Hebei province, and the other a trendy middle class family in Beijing.
The film challenges China to take action to solve the crisis, as new data released by Greenpeace shows over 90% of the 190 cities to report data in 2014 are exceeding China’s own limit on yearly average level for particulates (PM2.5) in the air.