Directed by Tiffany Sia • Documentary • 2024 • 33 minutes

“A Child Already Knows” is a short film that describes a child’s retelling of an escape from Shanghai disguised as a family vacation through the south. Half-remembered scenes of a historical cusp are recalled alongside a montage of appropriated early Mao-era children’s animations of the same era. The work assembles fragmentary memories and images that must be conjured through the mind, in lieu of historical reenactments too costly to make and made impossible in a place of no return. While children’s stories often expound a moral tale, “A Child Already Knows” presents a child as protagonist caught in complex and ambiguous retelling. Such scenes of Shanghai during the Cold War are harder to pin down, sometimes unsettling. The child becomes increasingly aware of the world of adult secrets. A television is flickering. Train sounds whir.

"For Sia, the impossibility of restaging family memories becomes the impetus to make cinema reveal something that cannot otherwise be seen." —Screen Slate