How many joints, bottles of vodka and online loans does it take to live in a self-created communist hippy community declared as a “Republic” to keep the flame of idealism burning? I am not sure about the substances, but the 80000 yuan worth of debt and the broken heating in winter prove to be the limit.

Republic is screening at Berlin International Film Festival

In his six square meters big apartment (the bathroom is obviously somewhere outside the flat), Li Eryang is constantly visited by his like-minded friends and acquaintances or his “Cosmic Brothers and Sisters” who seem to be sharing the same views on life. But do they all, really? There is a lot of talk about the world's politics going on, with Eryang mostly taking over the conversations to hold long monologues about the book “The Governance of China” written by the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party...