Li Baotian

This Chinese entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the 87th Academy Awards follows a widower who honors his late wife's request by returning to his hometown with his granddaughter to free his bird. During their journey at the edge of China, in all its magnificent natural landscapes, they discover new values, particularly the ones of the heart, and the importance of family and tradition.

Hired as a servant for pampered nightclub singer and mob moll Xiao Jinbao naive teenager Shuisheng is thrust into the glamorous and deadly demimonde of 1930s Shanghai. Over the course of seven days, Shuisheng observes mounting tensions as triad boss Tang begins to suspect traitors amongst his ranks and rivals for Xiao Jinbao's affections.

A woman married to the brutal and infertile owner of a dye mill in rural China conceives a boy with her husband's nephew but is forced to raise her son as her husband's heir without revealing his parentage in this circular tragedy. This tale of romantic and familial love in the face of unbreakable tradition is more universal than its setting.