Devout faith lets people believe that above reality there is a better place full of hope. But devotion also often leads people to extreme conservatism, like a stone sinking into the sea, or a fall to the bottom of a well cut off from the world. How can we gain the tolerance and wisdom we had at the start of life? The last rope that binds us may be faith itself. No one should live in ignorance, in the zoo of the gods; we should live in a love and understanding that can comfort others and guide ourselves.
In a small town in the far northwest there lives a poet named Taye. Aisha grew up with him. One day Aisha asks Taye to go with her to the monastery where his father became a monk. Taye drives her there, but on the way he accidentally wrecks the monastery's great Buddha statue. To seek forgiveness, his father, who has not spoken to Taye for 20 years, kneels before the monks and vows to bring back a great Buddha before the upcoming gilding day. Out of guilt, Aisha joins father and son on their search for a Buddha. Along the way, father and son slowly open the wounds buried deep inside them: the past concerning Taye's late elder brother. As she accompanies them, Aisha is also searching for answers about another life. These lives lean close to one another, yet can never speak the words buried deep in their hearts. Within their own faiths, they are a single thought apart, and a thousand miles apart.
Genre:
Drama, Road Movie, Black ComedyDirector/Screenwriter:
Pu BaProducer:
Lyu BoProduction Company:
Sunac Culture Film and Media (Qinghai) Co., Ltd.Executive Producer:
Tian ZhuangzhuangPu Ba: Graduated from the Directing Department, Beijing Film Academy. Author of the poetry collections Let Me Say It Again, Flowers and Spray and The Blind Girl and the Tabby Cat, among others. Wrote and directed the short film Searching for the Ox. In preparation: the feature film The Small-Town Poet. Completed screenplays: Searching for the Ox (2021), The Blind Girl and the Tabby Cat (2021) and Klara and My Sun (2021).
Lyu Bo: Senior producer at Sunac Culture. Graduated from the Communication University of China. From 2013 to 2019 worked in film marketing at Le Vision Pictures. Joined Sunac Pictures in 2019, working on film development and production.
Sunac Culture Film and Media (Qinghai) Co., Ltd.: Sunac Culture Group was founded in 2018. Under its strategy of "IP + content + new scenarios and new consumption", it has built an operating model centred on major IP and links new entertainment with new consumption in new scenarios. It owns two content labels, Sunac Pictures and Sunac Animation, with seven animation studios. Under the motto "Feel the Good", it works to create content and to provide film and television products and services to Chinese audiences.
Tian Zhuangzhuang: Leader of China's "Fifth Generation" directors, former head of the Directing Department of the Beijing Film Academy, now vice dean of the Shanghai Film Academy. Films as director: On the Hunting Ground, The Horse Thief, The Blue Kite, Springtime in a Small Town, The Go Master, The Warrior and the Wolf and others.
An epic of everyday life between a simple poet and his devout father.