May the Soil Be Everywhere

A tender and poetic matriarchal ode, May the Soil Be Everywhere traces the story of a peasant family in a remote Chinese village who endured war, the communist revolution, and the deadliest famine. Persecution and hardship eventually forced them to scatter. Against the backdrop of China’s rapid urbanization, the filmmaker sets out to unearth her family’s enduring bond with this long-forgotten village, hidden deep in the vast mountain ranges of the Loess Plateau.

Through a living archive of oral history and community theater, the film summons the past into the present, chronicling China’s tumultuous history through the lived experiences of four generations. Infused with performance, poetry, and animation, the film honors the land as a quiet witness to history and a vessel of memory.

“A shapeshifting and playful feature debut, the film is infused with performance, poetry, and animation as Zhao constructs a living archive of oral history and community theater. -Chloé Trayner, True/False Film Festival

“With remarkable intimacy and care, Zhao threads together memory, migration, and matriarchal lineage into a quiet, moving portrait of belonging.” - UnionDocs - Center for Documentary Art

“A tender and poetic matriarchal ode by Yehui Zhao.” - Inney Prakash, Prismatic Ground

“A very honest and personal story that expands into larger scale problems, pertaining to the tension between urban and rural, politics and the history.” - Special Mention Jury Award, DokuFest

Yehui Zhao is an award-winning filmmaker and artist whose work explores migration, decolonization, heritage, and regeneration. Her work takes root in the feminist legacies of the global south, drawing inspiration from revolutionary history, womanhood and daughtership, and the community’s undocumented collective memory. Yehui’s films have been shown at True/False, Dokufest, DOC NYC, UnionDocs, Prismatic Ground, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Asian American International Film Festival, and other programs. Yehui has published paintings, prints, and writing at Brooklyn Rail, Brooklyn Review and Action, Spectacle. She is a recipient of the IDA Pare Lorentz Documentary Fund, the New York State Council on the Arts grant, and the York Women in Film and Television Scholarship. Yehui holds an MFA in Integrated Media Arts from Hunter College and a Master of Science in Social Work from Columbia University. Yehui is an Adjunct Professor at Marymount Manhattan College in the Communication and Media Arts Department.