The Dutch documentary filmmaker Joris Ivens (1898-1989) received the honorary title 'Old friend of the Chinese people' from the Chinese communist regime. One of the reasons was the fact that in 1938 he gave the communists the camera that captured the first footage of Mao Zedong. Ivens made several films about China, notably the twelve-hour picture Hoe Yukong de bergen verzette (How Yukong Moved the Mountains), a tribute to Mao's Cultural Revolution, which China itself called a 'catastrophe' shortly after. Actor Jeroen Willems follows in Ivens' footsteps, in an attempt to understand why Ivens never reconsidered his positive coverage. Willems talks to experts and former associates of Ivens, including an interpreter, a pharmacist's assistant from the film (who explains how Ivens directed him) and writer Bai Hua, whom Ivens claimed as his best friend. Archive footage includes fragments from Ivens' work and interviews with the filmmaker, who asserts: 'A political truth filmed at one moment can completely change, even in its opposite, in the next.'
