Wang BingMan with no name , 2009
Set in a remote, unnamed region of rural China, Man with No Name is a meditative and haunting inquiry into solitude, resilience, and the elemental rhythms of life. Shot over the course of a year, Wang Bing’s quietly radical film observes the daily existence of a forty-year-old man living alone in a cave, cut off from society yet deeply attuned to the land. Without dialogue or overt narrative, the film follows his subsistence through the changing seasons—tending crops, collecting rainwater, repairing walls, and foraging through abandoned fields and villages. In its anonymity and intimacy, Man with No Name strips life to its barest essentials, offering an alternative to dominant narratives of China’s economic ascent. What emerges is a portrait of quiet defiance and human endurance—an austere yet deeply moving vision of self-sufficiency on the margins.
