Renowned Chinese-Australian artist Jiawei Shen is completing an extraordinary and monumental artwork that he says gives meaning to his whole life. Epic in concept and scale and painted over seven years, his "Tower of Babel" masterpiece is an enormous work of 130 square metres, depicting over 400 famous and infamous people including politicians, soldiers, scientists, artists, writers and filmmakers who were won over by the utopian vision of the Communist movement, as well as many forgotten people who tragically lost their lives to Revolution. As Jiawei’s masterpiece progresses, he and his artist wife Lan Wang tell their own stories of lives shared with millions of others before their 1989 migration. Welcome To Babel puts an intimate and human face to an extraordinary couple and the story of their generation in China and Australia, and asks whether the present can learn from the past.

Winner of the Sydney Film Festival Documentary Australia Award, Welcome to Babel tells an extraordinary tale with humour and heart, a deep dive into the bloody uprisings of the 20th century, juxtaposed with an intimate portrait of a marriage forged in the chaos of Cultural Revolution. Famous personalities, artworks, love stories and battles jostle for space on the walls of Jiawei Shen's massive studio, hidden in the sleepy coastal town of Bundeena, as Jiawei and Lan relate how their unlikely relationship blossomed in Mao’s China. Their story is like that of many Chinese-Australians from their generation, but their obsessive artistic drive and commitment to each other makes it a singular one in its own way.