Club Heaven – Films – Visions du Réel

Jona Honer
Netherlands, Belgium | 2026 | 77 min
World premiere
Language : Mandarin
Subtitles : English, French

At night, at the EDM Playhouse club in Chengdu, the euphoria of some feeds on the fatigue of others. The crowd, caught between the desire for an unfettered expression of life and the outward display of wealth, finds its contrast in the exhaustion of those who serve the revelry and in the precarity of their work. Club Heaven captures this choreography of mirrored bodies through precise observation and biting social commentary.

Over the course of a single night at the Playhouse in Chengdu, one of the world’s most renowned EDM clubs, Club Heaven captures both the ecstasy of the crowd and the exhaustion of those whose insecure work keeps the party going. The partygoers seek a euphoria that, for a moment, embodies the feeling of a full life created from peaks of joy and extreme bliss – a fullness that can overflow, spilling out of the body and leading to the quintessentially tragicomic outcome of the party (spoiler alert): vomiting. But it is also an opportunity to display wealth, notably through the purchase of champagne bottles brought to the private tables by the club staff in a ritualised choreography that crystallises the power of money. Conversely, the euphoria of some feeds on the exhaustion of others. Backstage, the workers are reminded that they are replaceable; in the back rooms, they discuss the beauty standards they’re required to meet, their wages and how to survive. Here, the night does not follow different rules in some carnivalesque reversal; rather, it reveals – and magnifies – the social dynamics of the day. And the careful, occasionally amused observation of these two interdependent yet reflected worlds reveals the belief structures of the capitalist system – the very ones that shape our dreams and behaviours.

Mourad-Anis Moussa

Club Heaven, 2026
Up or Out, 2015