Zhang Yue (left), chairman of the Broad Sustainable Building Group, speaks with an employee. Photo provided to China Daily

Leading lady a true legend

It's all about making a spectacle

Over the course of Gronroos' film, we track Paloheimo and Zhang's progress of turning their eco-cities into a reality. At the film's start, Paloheimo is speaking at a sustainability conference, brimming with hope. He is also disparaging of Europe.

"There is too much red tape and bureaucracy," he says. "In China it's taken me only a month to get my project off the ground." 

However we begin to witness the struggles that he and Zhang undergo - namely navigating the murky worlds of Chinese government approvals, fundraising campaigns and sustainability tests. From Changsha to Singapore, Oslo to London - plus a painfully awkward "lost in translation" moment in a Beijing restaurant - scene after scene unfolds, showing how power and influence, money and connections play out in a country where relationships reign supreme.

For most of the audience attending the premiere at London's Institute of Contemporary Art - which included several students, one of whom is from Changsha and is studying art history - China's environmental crisis was of predominant concern. Gronroos admits that tackling the subject was not easy. "Even I wondered, 'How do I make this into a film?'" she says. "I had to narrow it down to these two men and their utopian visions."

The audience, much like the film does, challenged the viability of Sky City, and its lack of, as one audience member put it, "social consciousness". To this, Gronroos responds that: " (Zhang's) ideas seem strange from a Western point of view. But from a Chinese perspective, I'm not sure. The idea of living in a big tower block like that might seem different to them. I've been thinking a lot about this lately."