How to Watch
Song Hao was a young man with a promising future. Ready for college, he pushes himself harder and harder, until fate throws him a curve. Believing he’s killed a man and orphaned a child, he flees his small town. But when his mother’s funeral calls him back home, has he reopened deadly grievances?
The intersection of ambition and privilege with morality and guilt are never more acute than in Xiaofeng Li’s piercing neo-noir. Song Hao should be the portrait of modern Chinese success: smart, driven, ready for his future. But when he’s told his place at university has been given to someone else, both he and his ambitious father are thrown for a loop. Soon, an accidental death sends Song to distant lands; it’s only upon his return fifteen years later that the outrages of the past will become the tragedies of the present. Xiaofeng Li’s third feature examines the ethical and spiritual consequences of a rapidly developing China.
Director Biography
Born in 1978 in Hefei, China, Xiaofeng Li studied filmmaking at Hogeschool Sint-Lukas Brussels. Aside from being a film critic and actor, he is also the director of the features Nezha (2014) and Ash (2017), which appeared at the 38th MSPIFF. He is currently an Associate Professor at Tongii University in China.
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