Crossing the Border - Zhaoguan

2018 [CHINESE]

Drama / Family

3
IMDb Rating 7.3/10 10 235 235

Plot summary

A seven-year-old boy is sent to the countryside to be with his grandfather Li Fuchang. By pure chance, the old man finds out where an old friend is, whose days are numbered. He then decides to travel with his motorized tricycle to visit him, taking the child with him.

Director

Meng Huo Photo
Meng Huo

Top cast

Taiyi Yang Photo
Taiyi Yang as Li Fuchang
Yunhu Li Photo
Yunhu Li as Li Yining
Dongcai Nie Photo
Dongcai Nie as Li Fuhe
Zhong Wan Photo
Zhong Wan as Li Yunsheng
720p.BluRay 1080p.BluRay
857.07 MB
1280*536
Chinese 2.0
NR
Subtitles cn  
24 fps
1 hr 33 min
Seeds 1
1.72 GB
1920*804
Chinese 5.1
NR
Subtitles cn  
24 fps
1 hr 33 min
Seeds 4

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by lilianaoana 8 / 10

Lovely grandpa-grandson road-movie

You know that feeling when you know from the first shot that you're gonna love the movie? This is that movie. Opening on a lovely brick wall down an alley in the countryside, an old man is slowly walking to his house, takes a ladder and climbs up his steep roof of very tiny tiles to fix some dislodged ones. Then his son comes to bring his little boy for the holidays as his wife is about to give birth and he's too busy to deal with both. Very rude, curt father, very caring, tender grandpa. It immediately brought my own grandmother to my mind, who was the same to me, maybe not as doting but she gave me that same feeling, in stark opposition to my mean mother. Grandparents soften so much as they age. Towards the end, grandpa apologizes to his own son for hitting him as a boy because he learned from his grandson that it's not right to hit children. I'm sure my grandma hit my mother but she never raised a finger at me. Ain't that funny?Director Huo Meng dedicated this movie to his grandpa and right there you know he was Ning Ning in this story. Well of course I teared up when I saw that on the screen. By the way this little boy is so sweet and innocent, the way little boys can only be in the movies. I loathed his father for how he was with him, always dismissive and abrasive.So grandpa and Ning Ning take a few days trip cross country in a bike with a cart attached to visit grandpa's old friend from when he was in a labour camp during the Cultural Revolution. He casually mentions in a conversation that he wouldn't have survived there without these friends. So then it turns into a delightful road movie with all sorts of unusual adventures for Ning Ning who is thrilled to experience new places and new people, having grandpa besides him to reassure him whenever he is afraid, of ghosts, of mean men, of speech-impaired men and so on.When he finally circles the last man in the picture... damn I cried again...
Reviewed by housearrestedever 9 / 10

Fantanstic Chinese movie!

This is one of the best Chinese movies that I've viewed in recent years. It doesn't feel like a dramatized movie but looks more like a documentary. All the actors in it didn't give you an impression that they were actors but the real common people who live now in China rural area, they are the real people still with kindness, generosity, sincerity like what we used to see in Chinese novels. The screeplay is very good, the director is with natural talent to paint a very plain and peaceful picture of China. The camera team also did a wonderful job to render the beautiful Chinese countryside.But this movie also make me wonder if it really likes what we've seen in China nowadays? The Chinese people still with such kindness and generosity to help strangers? The Chinese cops still treat people with kindness, patience and courtesy? Well, what we have seen recently about China is simply the opposite. Therefore, while I compliment this movie for its humanitarian purity and humanly goodness, but on the other side of the token, I have to say this movie is also quite unreal and overly exaggerated to paint a fake picture of today's China. But at the same time, by using the dialog from the old people who had been through the 10 years Culture Revolution and survived the atrocity from the Chinese Communist Party, we also feel this movie is very real and true to the core. It also uses the words from the leading old man, saying life in China is like crossing one after another border check-point, seemingly endless and deadly until you finally pass the final one of Hell.
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