Widely hailed as one of the finest works of arthouse cinema to emerge from China in years, Li Ruijun’s realist drama was pulled from cinemas there last year after becoming a sleeper hit.
The film follows two middle-aged peasants, Ma and Guiying , long exploited and ignored by their families, who throw them together in an arranged marriage as a means of doing away with them. With little choice but to try to scratch out a life together, the awkward couple retreats to the abandoned outskirts of town and begins working a small patch of land together.
became a phenomenon after its release on July 8 last year. Made for just $275,000, the film opened small but became a sizable sleeper hit, climbing to about $14 million in ticket sales thanks entirely to viral word of mouth among local film lovers. However, on Sept. 26, with its ticket sales were still climbing,was pulled from all Chinese cinemas, and discussion of it was briefly blocked on local social media.
China was then in the lead-up to the 20th National Congress of China’s Communist Party, to be held in October 2022, when Xi Jinping would be given a groundbreaking third term as the country’s leader. Propaganda messaging around the moment was all about China’s relentless rise as a global superpower and the successful eradication of rural poverty — definitely not the loss of delicate tradition and the environmental degradation that had come with such advancement.
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