Dongnan Chen's debut at CPH:DOX explores Chinese adolescence amid a rising wave of smart home design

A Dream Parallel to Reality: The Film's Narrative

Dongnan Chen's second feature, titled "Dreams of the Red River," premiered at the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival (CPH:DOX) in early March. The film follows three girls in a small Chinese town, one of whom is confronting her first menstruation, while the others navigate school, family expectations, and the encroaching presence of digital devices in their homes. Chen describes the work as a dream that runs parallel to reality, a notion that shapes each scene's visual language and narrative rhythm. The opening sequence captures the soft rustle of cotton dresses as the girls gather around a low‑lit kitchen table.

Beyond documenting a rite of passage, the film reframes the bodily milestone as a point of friction between tradition and the quiet surveillance of smart appliances that now populate domestic spaces. The tension between privacy and convenience becomes palpable when one girl pauses at the bathroom door, hand hovering over a smart mirror that flashes health reminders; her hesitation mirrors a broader cultural negotiation of autonomy within an increasingly networked home.

Smart Appliances as Quiet Actors in Modern Chinese Homes

In the same towns where Chen's characters live, manufacturers are introducing refrigerators that monitor food freshness, air purifiers that adjust to ambient humidity, and voice‑activated kettles that start boiling at the sound of a spoken command. These innovations promise ease, yet they also embed data collection into daily rituals, creating a structural tension between efficiency and safety. The faint hum of a connected air purifier becomes the soundtrack to a teenage girl's study session, while the glow of an app‑controlled lamp marks the moment she decides to turn off the lights before a family dinner.

The convergence of the film's intimate portrayal of puberty with the omnipresence of smart home technology underscores why this subject matters: it reveals how personal milestones are being reshaped by a society that mediates even the most private moments through networked devices. By situating the narrative within China's rapid domestic‑tech adoption, the piece captures a cultural shift that extends beyond cinema into the lived experience of everyday households.

As the festival audience watched the final scene—a quiet night where the girls sit on a balcony, the city lights flickering like distant pixels—their breaths mingled with the low, steady sigh of a smart thermostat adjusting temperature. The moment lingered, a subtle reminder that the future of intimacy is being negotiated in the spaces we inhabit.

In this intersection of coming‑of‑age storytelling and domestic innovation, Chen offers a lens through which we can observe the evolving choreography of body, tradition, and technology.

When we step back, the film and the appliances together map a society in transition, where personal growth and technological convenience are in constant dialogue.

Each quiet adjustment in a home reflects a larger cultural negotiation.