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THE SUMMER IS GONE

八月

By Dalei ZHANG

PARALLAX FILMS - as SALES All rights, World

Family - Completed 2016

- Year of production
- 2016
- Genres
- Family, First film, Drama
- Countries
- CHINA
- Languages
- CHINESE
- Duration
- 110 mn
- Director(s)
- Dalei ZHANG
- Synopsis
- In the early 1990s in China, a western city boy named Xiao Lei just graduated from primary school and finished the exam to get into middle school. Finally he had a long-waited summer holiday without any homework. However, Xiao Lei did not feel relaxed or happy in this hot summer holiday.
  That year, marketization reform took place in a large scale among state-owned enterprises in China, which
  broke so many people’s “iron rice bowls”(known as lifelong jobs in China). The vigorous reform tide stroke
  and impacted the whole generation. The state-owned film studio where Xiao Lei’s father worked also started cruel reform, which forced every family in this film studio to make difficult choices, including Xiao Lei’s.
  With boredom, the 12-year-old Xiao Lei quietly felt everything that silently happening around him in this homework-free summer holiday. The adults restrained their inner restlessness, though they seemed calm; the courtyard was becoming of more and more clamor instead of vitality and hope, though it seemed alive.
  The long and hot summer soon passed. Xiao Lei put on the key middle school uniform as he wished; his mother’s grandmother had bedridden for many years and she passed away in peace; his grandpa decided to go out for relaxation with his grandma; only his father was absent for the family photo taking. His father got a job for life which was far away from his hometown and wouldn’t be back in six months. The night when autumn began the broad-leaved epiphyllum bloomed after being taken precious care of by Xiao Lei’s mother.
  And life went on...