Friends or Foes

Instead of providing a fixed story, Friends or Foes attempted to reverse adult-led approaches to filmmaking, letting the children − the real target audience − decide what to see! It is a story about Xiang-An Zhang, a sixth grader, who runs into a dilemma when making a new friend. The director made the film and paused at the situation when Xiang- An, faced a choice while his new friend is going to step into a dangerous mistake… What should he do? The first half of the story was aired on PTS channel, and viewable by video streaming on the Internet and mobile devices. In addition, DVDs were distributed to teachers to work with their students in school, and engage their participation in creating endings for the film. PTS encouraged children to submit their own ideas or endings, attracting over 600 submissions in total. In the end 7 submissions were chosen. Director Wang adopted three different endings based on the children’s submissions − allowing the audience to decide on Xiang-An’s final decision.