The Story of Qiu Ju

Qiu Ju (Gong Li) is a pregnant peasant woman whose husband has been kicked in the groin by Wan Qinglai (Liu Peiqi), the village head. She wants one thing, an apology, and she takes the case to the nearby town, then to the city, one bureaucrat after another. Zhang Yimou follows her through offices and hallways, and the story keeps returning to the quarrel between her family and the man she is asking to say sorry.