Pioneering director Wang Xiaoshuai (Beijing Bicycle) returns with this magnificent, wrenching drama - an epic family saga spanning three decades that charts the collective damage, trauma and emotional history of China’s one-child policy and the Cultural Revolution.

Yaojun (Wang Jingchun) and Liyun (Yong Mei) were once happy, but when their young son dies in a tragic accident, the couple never truly recovers. Grieving, they leave their factory jobs and move away from their friends, until years later and many other events in their entwined histories, Yaojun and Liyun decide to return. Caught up in the terrible human cost of China’s one-child policy they and others find their lives entangled in the gears of a society in the throes of constant dramatic change.

Poetically moving between past and present and told in sweeping tableaux, this part critique, part melodrama, is a film of considerable emotional power. It also contains two of the most moving performances you’ll see this year (Wang Jingchun and Yong Mei were winners of the Best Actor and Best Actress at Berlin) – who are the beating heart of what is an immense story of loss, love and redemption.

View the British Board of Film Certification’s Ratings info for this film

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