After a successful entry at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2025 with “Extracurricular Activity”, Germany-born filmmaker, composer and cinematographer Dean Wei bagged the Tiger Short Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) in 2016 with the clever and stylish hybrid work “The Apple Doesn’t Fall…”. Wei studied cinematography at the Beijing Film Academy and currently lives in Beijing.
The Apple Doesn’t Fall… is distributed by Dogme23.
Set in a space that belongs more to theatre than to cinema, a typical Chinese one-child family moves and interacts according to a precise script. The Father (Cui Tao) returns home from work and a conversation with the Mother (Zhou Niannian) automatically begins. Shame it is not a two-way exchange—not even a “conversation” as such. Instead, each follows their own agenda, their own stream of pre-programmed lines, creating a dissonant and irritating background “noise”. Their teenage Daughter (Xie Ziling) moves silently between them, taking advantage of their mutual disinterest in her—especially the Father’s—to claim small freedoms.
A humorous family photo session highlights the gap between the image of a happy family (later framed and displayed in the living room as a badge of honour) and the drab reality beneath. This disconnection becomes even more evident when, in the next interlude, the Father forgets to show up on time for his daughter’s birthday and a cleverly staged non-verbal sparring unfolds.
Shot in an intimate Academy ratio, Dean Wei uses irony and the power of physical expression to deliver a sharp critique of societal expectations and the anxiety they create. Trapped on a stage, the three characters perform their parts relentlessly, though their affectations are impossible to hide. More a piece of contemporary dance than a film in the strict sense, the choreographer Liu Shiyu deserves equal billing with Wei. Her extraordinary work bridges dance and cinema, creating a language that merges both.
One scene stands out: when Father and Mother argue over Father missing Daughter’s birthday, the entire confrontation is expressed through rhythmic stomping of their feet—in a sort of flamenco routine—which conveys the full rage and tension of an angry verbal clash, even when they are no longer on screen. In fact, it must be mentioned that sound design plays a crucial role throughout the film: the carefully augmented and selected noises carry much of the narrative in a film which is largely devoid of spoken lines.
The film’s title, “The Apple Doesn’t Fall…”, is a truncated version of the proverb “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree”, used to point out how children resemble their parents. This shortened, allusive version sounds provocative, inviting the audience to fill in the meaning themselves, and perhaps ponder how much the apple really did fall. Interestingly, the end credits list director Tan Chui Mui—together with dancers Yin Fang and Wu Meng-Ke—as Mentor. Tan, one of the top independent filmmakers and a pioneer of the Malaysian New Wave, is famously involved in mentoring and nurturing young talents.
To conclude, “The Apple Doesn’t Fall…” is an original gem of storytelling, a work bound to charm festival audiences and hopefully a launchpad for the young director’s next adventure.
