Advanced search

Tharlo is an orphan who lives a simple life, but could a brief encounter with a woman in his local town change his life for ever?

The Yangs have moved from Gansu, one of the poorest provinces in Northwestern China, and settled in Shenzhen in South China more than 20 years ago. Having hoped to find a future for their next generation, the Yangs only reckon that after many hard years of working in Shenzhen as construction and factory workers, the new Shenzhen no longer has a place for them. They return to their home village in Gansu. Yang Yaoting, their Shenzhen-born daughter, who has neither a Shenzhen residency nor a college degree, sees none of the future her parents have envisioned for her in modern Shenzhen. Amidst the harsh reality of daily life, the quiescent, soft-spoken Yaoting, along with her peers, leads a solitary life, and can only find solace in the fantasy worlds of virtual reality and WeChat. Seeing her parents having difficulty in readapting to a rural life back home, Yaoting decides to visit Gansu and bring her beloved parents back to Shenzhen.

73 years old Ma and his good mate Cao were once coffin makers. Since Chinese government implemented the practice of cremation, the demand for coffins dried up therefore Ma spend his days hanging out with his grandchildren. When Ma returns from spending mid-Autumn festival with his daughter and her family, he is told that Cao has passed away and his coffin is secretly buried in a cornfield next to a lake. Later Ma claims to have seen a white crane by the lake but none of his children believes him. Thereafter, Ma waits by the lake everyday and becomes a laughingstock in the neighbourhood. Ma's grandson asks why is he waiting for the white crane, Ma says,"I worked so hard to raise your father, uncle and aunt, but now they want to turn me into a pile of ash. I want to be carried to heaven by the white crane." Realising that this is but a dream, his little grandchildren innocently propose to take the matter into their own hands.

Year 2050, the organization "Raksha" created a technology that can manipulate people's memory. A group of lady soldiers infiltrate their base to destroy it, but once they can't tell what's real and what's fake.

Yangjin and Wang Xiaobo,both 5 graders at elementary school are best friends for each other.Wang Xiaobo constantly brags about the river running through his hometown and numbers of crabs and fish living in it.There comes a long vacation after their graduation from the elementary school.Yangjin plans to visit Wang Xiaobo on his way to the grandmother's.He saves the money for this trip.After leaving the letter that he can manage the trip alone to his grandmother's,two boys starts his adventure.After realizing that it is not as fun as expected to stay at Wang Xiaobo's hometown.Yangjin gets anxious to leave for the grandmother's as soon as possible but as Yang's friend doesn't let him go,his trip gets postponed day by day.

In some rural communities in northern China, the "ghost wife" trade has become an unusual accompaniment to customary funerary rites: rather than allowing them to pass into the afterlife unwed, deceased bachelors are posthumously married off to dead unmarried women. This unique and sometimes controversial custom provides the narrative engine for Peng Taos The Cremator, a moving portrait of an undertaker who resolves to end his loneliness with a posthumous union. Presiding over a small local mortuary is the stoic Cao (Cheng Zhengwu), whose job it is to oversee burial rites for the towns departed a strict system based on a variety of factors: social rank, gender, prominence within the family, etc. in order to ensure a peaceful journey into the afterlife. Cremation, which is held in abhorrence by the community, is reserved only for those deceased whose remains go unclaimed by family or friends. This has led Cao and his friend Xie (Cao Xian) to develop a lucrative sideline selling unidentified corpses as "gate-passing spouses" to bereaved families wanting companions for their unwed, departed relatives to be buried with. Shortly after Cao discovers that his coughing fits are symptoms of a terminal illness, the police deliver an unidentified female suicide victim to the mortuary and Cao decides to take the young woman as his ghost wife upon his death. But the arrival of the womans sister Xiuqiao (Wolf Girl, who also plays the girls deceased twin), complicates Caos plan. Stricken with guilt, he confesses his intentions to the shocked Xiuqiao, who finds herself torn between fidelity to her sister and the growing kinship she feels for the deeply lonesome undertaker. Poetic, sombre and bittersweet, The Cremator unfolds with an intoxicatingly languorous rhythm, mining the intricacies of mourning rituals for both pathos and gentle humour. Caos tentative relationship with Xiuqiao becomes a balm for his stark and lonely existence and as he moves ever closer to his inescapable end, one wonders whether even the most fleeting of connections we make in our lives have the power to resonate beyond the grave. Author: Giovanna Fulvi