Winter Vacation

Director: LI Hongqi

2010 / 91min / DCP

Winner of the Golden Leopard at 2010’s Locarno International Film Festival, poet/novelist/filmmaker Li’s absurdist comedy takes place in a backwater town in frigid Inner Mongolia, following a quartet of local youths as they first desultorily wander through the last day of their winter vacation, then return to the tribulations of romantic frustration, quotidian bullying, and existential anguish that mark the academic year. A wryly observed depiction of the frustrations of small-town life as faced by adolescents and adults alike, from a director “at the forefront of independent Chinese cinema.” (Cinema Scope)

Part of Small Town, Big Dreams