Director:Li Gen
Country/Region:China
Running Time:105mins
Executive Producer:Wang Hongwei , Patricia Cheng
Producer:Wan Juan
Screenplay:Li Gen
Cinematographer:Hung-i Yao
Editor:Matthieu Laclau, Yann-Shan Tsai
Sound:Tu Duun Chih
Music:Hualun
Production Designer:Lim Chung Man
Cast:Qi Xi、Xie Chengze、Niu Chao、Qiu Tian、Song Ningfeng、Chen Yongzhong、Junko Matsumoto、Shuji Otsuki、Yoko Imamoto
Special Starring:Sylvia Chang
As an exchange student for one year, Li Xiaoli arrives at Fuchinobe, located in a remote area of Tokyo. He gets a part-time job at a Chinese restaurant named “Nankokute”. While he works there, he meets a group of his fellow countrymen and some locals. Living at the bottom of society, each of them must repeated face the choices of separation. There’s nowhere to run as if they are prisoners living in a jail. Each of them has their own secrets and pains. Inadvertently, Li Xiaoli and the group gradually change from indifference to well-acquaninted. They give each other warmth, even if it’s very insignificant. A year soon passes by and Li returns home in due course. Everyone moves on with their lives as if nothing happened, as if Li has never been here or he has never left.
Li Gen, born in 1987 in Beijing, graduated from the Japanese Department of the Beijing Language and Culture University in 2009, and received his Director’s Master Degree from Beijing Film Academy. The film was creatively adapted from personal experience. It’s a story about “separation” and “yearning”. Although merely one year of studying abroad as a foreign exchange student seem prosaic, we’re able to interchange the most sincere human relationships.