Han Mengyun’s Suffering Hands, Broken Thread (2025) traces how love, cultural beauty and bodily exhaustion intersect with the industrialization of textile-making. Following the fading oral tradition of singing that once guided carpet weaving across Iran and Central Asia—and the loss of the carpet’s original matrilineal meaning—the work charts its industrial aftermath.

Filmed in textile factories across Margilan and Samarkand, the film listens closely to the soundscapes of production: from carpet workshops where women weave while caring for their children, to Soviet-era machines still operating in silk factories. These mechanized environments map a shift from rhythmic lullabies and mnemonic songs to the relentless drone of industrial machinery. Through this sonic and visual meditation, the film reflects on the legacy of Soviet industrialization, the fragile remnants of heritage and spiritual practice, and the tensions between faith in God and the obsession with machine, cybernetics, Taylorism, socialist ideals, and enduring spiritual devotion.