In Hohhot, the capital of China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, 12-year-old Zhang is trying to enjoy his last summer vacation before entering middle school. But his simple desires take a back seat to the political turbulence that is swiftly unraveling his family fortunes. As China embraces the market economy, his father’s job-for-life—not to mention artistic ambitions—evaporate when the state-run film studio where he is employed becomes privatized. And life at home is no easier as Zhang’s mother is now suddenly obsessed with placing her son in an elite private school, despite his poor grades and lack of ambition. Cast with mostly amateur actors, and shot against a backdrop of meticulously observed period detail from the early 1990s, first time director Zhang Dalei’s black-and-white memoir is a gorgeous and moving examination of an overlooked moment in Chinese history.
Press
”Zhang Dalei's poetic black-and-white debut paints an intricate portrait of a family at a largely unheralded moment in China's recent past.” - Variety
"A beautifully-shot black-and-white drama unfolding across one sweltering summer in a provincial Chinese city in the early 1990s, ‘The Summer Is Gone’ is a lush and melancholic ode about the end of an era" - The Hollywood Reporter