Director & camera Miaoyan Zhang

Script Rice Zhang

Art director Juemin Du

Music Angel Firestar Simmons

Cast: Xinjiang Guo, Xuehui Huo, Haonan Bai

Producers Miaoyan Zhang, Guillaume de Seille

Production A Rice Production & Arizona Productions with the support of Hubert Bals Film Fund, Asian Cinema Fund of Busan IFF, Angoa

 

  When his mother disappears one autumn, a thirteen-year-old boy leaves his younger sister with his grandfather and goes on a journey in search of his mother. The boy wanders alone along the valley of the polluted Yellow River with nothing, except a letter from his mother. On his way he befriends another lost soul: a boy who introduces him to a gang of thieves and to drugs. His life now revolves round stealing, smoking drugs and the search for his mother, whom he can find nowhere. One day he decides it is better to die under the train. But as the train thunders past, his desire to die vanishes. The boy walks back through the snow to his grandfather and sister. Upon arriving in his village he learns that his grandfather has sold his sister. With nothing but a photo of his sister and the clothes he is wearing, the boy embarks upon yet another journey along the dirty Yellow River.

 

MIAOYAN ZHANG

  Born in Manchuria and growing up during the Culture Revolution. In the 90-s he got an opportunity to study art at UC Berkeley which enabled him to watch foreign movies nonstop. Miaoyan started writing stories about contemporary China. None of them were published due to state censorship. In 2006 he borrowed money and spent four weeks making his first movie “Xiaolin Xiaoli”, which won awards in the international film festivals. “Black Blood” (2011), his second feature film, was shown in Cannes and won NETPAC Award at the Rotterdam IFF and Best Film Award in St. Petersburg Film Forum. “A Corner of Heaven” is his third feature film.