One Second

“A mere second at its shortest, a whole lifetime at its longest.”

The Fugitive (Zhang Yi) has escaped a labour camp during the Cultural Revolution, and the one thing he wants is to see a movie. He crosses paths with Orphan Liu (Liu Haocun), a homeless girl who has her own reasons for being near the same reel of film. Zhang Yimou builds the story around one plain idea: in a time of bare shelves and fear, a few seconds of light on a screen could be worth running for.