Directing
In memory of the Japanese earthquake on 3.11, each director presents a 3 minute and 11 second short film in tribute to those who were lost that day.
One day, a mother who used to be hospitalized in Tokyo comes to Kashihara city in Nara prefecture to find her son. But the only clue she has is the digital camera which her son forgot at the hospital.
Jalainur, a name from the beautiful Lake Hulun(aka Dalai nuur in Mongolian), is one of the last places in the world where steam trains are still running. It is also where the story begins. Master Chu is retiring from the open-cut coal mine where he has been working for more than 30 years as a train technician. Somehow he decides to retire one month earlier. His apprentice, Zhi-Zhong, whom he shares a father-son-like relationship with, insists on seeing him off, accompanying him along the way to his daughter's place, somewhere miles away on the border between China and Russia.
There's a kind of feeling that I want to express, namely a different kind of love. Normally love stories happen to people of similar ages, or people growing up together. But the kind of love that I want to shoot features an age gap between the lovers. There's not only romantic love, but also family love, and the love between a brother and sister." - Zhao Ye
Animator Zhao Ye makes his feature-film debut with this challenging contemporary fable about the wages of personal sacrifice.
