The Hostel《青年旅舍》

In 2014, I moved from London to Shanghai. Being on a low budget, I decided to stay in a youth hostel. At first, as is the case with any new place one moves to, everything was exciting. But it later became an uneventful bore, a sort of inescapable limbo. I never intended to stay there as long as I did but I ended up living there for a whole year, outstaying almost everyone who had lived there. In many ways, a hostel functions quite like a secret society: guests flock together, revel in their newfound camaraderie, and chant their own lingo before disbanding into thin air, never to meet again. And indeed, while some guests have remained close friends of mine, most have drifted onto other things and moved on with their lives. I don’t expect I’ll ever see most of them again. But for every farewell, there is something to reflect upon. And for whatever it was worth, I felt a strong desire to document the phenomenon of what it means to be a traveller, an expat or a foreigner living outside one’s native country, and how the hostel itself—essentially a world society under one roof—guides one on the road to greater awareness and self-discovery. So I decided to make a film about it.

The Hostel is a documentary exploring the space of a Chinese youth hostel, described by one guest as "a well of lost souls" in which inhabitants are on the well-trodden path of searching for existential meaning in their lives. Here, guests from all over the world brush shoulder-to-shoulder, irrespective of culture, class or race. Brief friendships, lost loves, and chance encounters imbue the hostel space with its own transient, collective identity; a revolving door of intersecting lives, interwoven stories and an abundance of anecdotes to be remembered and forgotten. This film is an attempt at preserving some of the events that took place within its four walls.

Directed, Filmed & Edited by Ryan Harding.