Logline
A father who has lost his only child unexpectedly receives an artificial intelligence operating system that stores his daughter's memory data, and uncovers a past of love and separation between father and daughter.
Dear Child
Creative Statement
In China there is a particular group called "only children", and alongside it another group, "families who have lost their only child". Our story begins with a father who has lost his only child, but it sets out to examine, layer by layer, the codependent relationship common in the families of only children. Last summer, an article titled "AI Resurrection" caught my attention. If children who have died could be "brought back" through AI, how would their parents face it? Would the love and hate left unsaid, and the growth and reconciliation cut short, have a chance to continue?
Synopsis
Love and separation are two sides of one coin. It keeps spinning, stirring up our seemingly calm lives. Li Zhiqiang, past the midpoint of his life, should have set aside all haste and regret and begun a quiet life. But an accident takes the young life of his only daughter, Li Miao. Time, it turns out, is the final judge. Li Zhiqiang's world collapses, until the arrival of Bo Niu, an artificial intelligence operating system that stores his daughter's memory data, forcibly breaks through the wall of pain and anger he has built around his heart. Doubtful and confused, Li Zhiqiang cautiously approaches this "foreign object" that is both strange and familiar, and amid the pull of longing and the clashes it brings, uncovers a past of love and betrayal between father and daughter. Having lived through the wildness and freedom of the 1980s, Li Zhiqiang was once a poet of life, but he became trapped by the trivia of reality and the responsibilities of family. Like a wild wolf that has lost its open land and cold moonlight, he was gradually worn down into the stubborn, dull and disappointing ordinary father his daughter saw. Li Miao, like every generation of young people locked inside their parents' habitual thinking, held the romantic ideals of an idealist and rebelled and fled with all her strength. Past and future overlap. Through artificial intelligence, although the child has flown away like a kite, her shadow remains before her father's eyes, still watching, still caring. In the end, through love, they understand that we are the same kind of life, each equally special, whole and independent. Separation is the final answer sheet we must hand in together in life. It should not be an end, but a beginning...
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Genre:
Family, Sci-Fi, Comedy -
Director:
Chu Shu
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Screenwriter:
Chu Shu -
Producer:
Liu Hongyu