So Long, My Son 12A

Moving between past and present and told in sweeping tableaux, this beautiful and deeply moving epic family saga spans the tail-end of the 20th century in China. It charts the collective damage, trauma and emotional history of the country’s one-child policy and the Cultural Revolution.

The film highlights the terrible human costs of the one-child policy and explores how the lives of individuals were caught up in the gears of a society in the throes of constant dramatic change. Part critique and part melodrama, its considerable emotional power is bolstered by award-winning performances from Wang Jingchun and Yong Mei as an ordinary couple struggling to cope with the forces affecting their lives.

A Sixth-Generation veteran, pioneering director Wang Xiaoshuai’s (Beijing Bicycle, Shanghai Dreams, In Love We Trust) magnificent, wrenching drama screened in Competition at the Berlinale this year.