The Stranger by the Artificial Lake

Review of the short film Man Made Lake

This brilliant short film by Annie Ning begins with a deceptively simple premise: a little girl claims her finger was wounded by a creature in the lake, and her mother—a French immigrant—pressures her husband and the neighborhood residents to investigate. The French woman’s foreignness in China only deepens the neighbors’ skeptical view of the trouble she is causing. With skill and subtlety the film probes the position of the outsider in a new society, culminating in a surprising ending that transforms the lake incident into something far more significant—a far more serious threat that lies in wait for the foreigner. The Olympic sequences stand as an outstanding example of indirect menace in short-form cinema.