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Mistress Dispeller, Chinese documentary at Venice 2024, sheds light on peculiar profession

  • Documentary Mistress Dispeller sheds light on a peculiar profession in China, one involving saving marriages by ending extramarital affairs

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Wang Zhenxi is a mistress dispeller based in Luoyang, China. Elizabeth Lo, a Hong Kong-born film director, follows her for her new film, Mistress Dispeller. Photo: Mistress Dispeller

Over the past decade, China has seen the rise of a peculiar profession: the mistress dispeller.

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Hired by clients with unfaithful husbands or wives, a dispeller’s job is simple in theory but complicated in practice: to break up the cheating partner and their lover so that the marriage can stay intact without the presence of a third party.

It is a phenomenon increasingly evident in Chinese cities, where the growth of the economy is seemingly mirrored in the increasing rates of infidelity.
Yet, while affairs happen all over the world, hiring professional dispellers – who can charge the equivalent of over US$10,000 – is a practice specific to mainland China. Bound by familial duty and unnerved by the enduring stigma of divorce, scorned partners, typically women, turn to dispellers as a last resort.
A poster of Mistress Dispeller. Photo: Mistress Dispeller
A poster of Mistress Dispeller. Photo: Mistress Dispeller

Hong Kong filmmaker Elizabeth Lo takes a tender, empathetic look at this profession in Mistress Dispeller, a film that follows a mistress-dispelling case from beginning to end.

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Set to receive its world premiere in the 2024 Venice International Film Festival’s Orizzonti section on September 2, the film is Lo’s second feature-length documentary; Stray, about Istanbul’s stray dogs and Syrian refugees, was her first.
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