Life/Imitation. The world of contradictory languages. The virtual/real packed with people performing their given duties, or following their postulated avatars like players of a role-playing game. The film <Life Imitation> combines the virtual and the real to reflect the anxiety and depression of the Shanghai youth. This film starts with the observation of textual conversation-the most pertinent method of the contemporary human to privately connect with someone-and calls us into the most real yet irreal time and space. The chat messages full of agony over love and solitude soon connect to the virtual reality of a computer game, then to the reality of a certain place in Shanghai. This is not developed through a consistent narration but is organically linked, and all of them may be the same being while being completely different beings. This world of the virtual/the real sometimes seem to be a borderless mass, or a dream to disappear after waking up, or a mirror where the frame of camera-figure-virtuality gaze into each other. This film illuminates the form of anxiety and depression through extending the concept of existence in multiple ways, eventually amplifying the surreal and the essentials. Numerous life/imitation(s) roam the streets of night or stay lying down, or idle about, but identify their existence through selfies. This is the way Life Imitation revives the irreversible beings. [Choi Min-a]