The Small Station Policeman

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Creative Statement

"Events" are an indispensable element of a story. But is having nothing to do an event? Is looking for something to do when there is nothing an event? Xiao Zhao in this story is a character without events. He wants something to happen, but nothing does. The "the bigger the better" events we create in writing mostly do not belong to life; the absence of events may sometimes be what life really looks like. Unlike the usual ideas of a protagonist and a main plot, Xiao Zhao is not a protagonist, and no main event comes his way. What I want to run through the whole film is Xiao Zhao's mood, and the bleak Gobi of the Northwest that stays the same through all four seasons.

Synopsis

Xiao Zhao has wanted to be a policeman since he was a child. On the way he tries again and again and fails again and again. In the end he does become a policeman: a railway policeman. A railway policeman is still a policeman, and imagining fights with criminals on platforms and in carriages, Xiao Zhao stands proudly before the old station chief: "Send me to the toughest place." He is sent to a fifth-class station in the Gobi, where a slow train stops only once every three days, and his work turns into long stretches of having nothing to do. Again and again, Xiao Zhao looks for something to do where there is nothing. To save face, he boasts to a blind date about how dangerous his work is, and is caught out. However much he stirs things up, nothing much seems to change in his life. Frustrated, Xiao Zhao wavers: everyone says I'm a policeman, I think I'm a policeman, but am I really a policeman? As the fifth-class station he guards is downgraded to a passenger halt, Xiao Zhao gradually comes to understand what it means for him to stay here.

Genre:

Drama, Police

Director:

Shi Ang

Screenwriter:

Liu Ruoxin

Producer:

Yao Jinhu

Production Company:

Beijing Naifei Technology Co., Ltd. | Tianjin Rabbit Hole Film Culture Media Co., Ltd.

About the Director

Shi Ang: Directing Department, Beijing Film Academy. His short film The Kid Who Plays the Tuba was selected for the Kaohsiung Film Festival during the 50th Golden Horse Awards and for a special screening at the Tokyo International Children's Film Festival, and won Best Film at the 1st Pingyao International Film Festival. His online film Donkey Up a Tree won an Excellence Award in the Beijing Outstanding Online Audio-Visual Programmes and was named an Outstanding Online Film at the 1st China Online Film Week.

About the Screenwriter

Liu Ruoxin: BA from the Department of Dramatic Literature, Central Academy of Drama; master's degree from the Department of Performing Arts, Université Lumière Lyon 2, France.

About the Producer

Yao Jinhu: Eleven years of experience in film and television producing. Representative works include the online films The Eighteen Arhats of Shaolin Temple, Master of Demon Subduing, The Monkey King, The Yellow River Monster, Puberty 3, Climbing Up, Counter-Terrorism: Fight to the End, Counter-Terrorism: 33 Days of Love Under Fire and Youth as Promised.

About the Production Company

Beijing Naifei Technology Co., Ltd. and Tianjin Rabbit Hole Film Culture Media Co., Ltd.: Naifei works mainly in films and web series. Its labels include Naifei Pictures, which focuses on quality series, and Rabbit Hole Culture, a young label focused on online films. It also works in animation, comics, short dramas and short videos, and manages projects professionally across IP and original development, greenlighting, production management, marketing and distribution, and commercial value-added services, supplying film and television works to the content market.

Logline

Xiao Zhao, a policeman at a small station, has never forgotten his childhood dream of being a hero. Now, in the hard winds of the Northwest, within his limited powers and amid endless idleness, he can only wonder whether he is really a policeman at all.