The story is adapted from real people in a documentary and takes place in Heimahe Town, the best spot for watching the sunrise over Qinghai Lake. What moved me most while shooting the documentary was how people there discussed the relationship between faith and love. Sometimes love is constrained and bound by faith; sometimes faith is the only test of true love. They believe that love baptized by faith is pure and eternal, and that love is itself a kind of faith. Sunrise, adapted from the documentary, tells of the entanglement between a released horse and a pair of lovers. The custom of releasing animals is at the core of our story. Releasing a horse means it can no longer be kept, ridden or killed, and is left to grow old naturally on the grassland; release means the soul gains freedom. For the young man, the horse stands for faith; for the girl, it stands for love. The three releases of the horse, each in a different way, follow the lovers as they meet, fall in love, part and fall in love again. The first release is for freedom, the second for faith and the third for love. By custom a horse can be released only once, but in our story it is released three times, a way of showing people how to love each other and how to defend the true meaning of love: sometimes love needs to be set free.
A horse is released three times, each time with a different meaning, testing a couple caught between faith and love.
Genre:
DramaRunning Time:
120 minDirector/Screenwriter:
Zhaxi QingpengProducer:
Liang YuExecutive Producer:
Pema TsedenZhaxi Qingpeng: Studied at the Beijing Film Academy. His work Gangla Metok won the Best Pitch Award in the documentary section of the Shanghai International Film Festival, an Outstanding Pitch of the Year at the Zhejiang International Film Festival, the China Documentary Academy Award, and Documentary of the Year at the 13th Chinese Youth Image Forum, among others.
Liang Yu: Producer. Worked on Zhang Yimou's feature films Curse of the Golden Flower, A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop, Under the Hawthorn Tree, The Flowers of War, Coming Home, One Second and Snipers.
Pema Tseden: Director, screenwriter and writer, and an award winner at the Venice International Film Festival.
A documentary style that focuses on the most ordinary people, telling their lives in a realist manner and drawing out the themes.