Based on the semi-autobiographical novel Balzac et la petite tailleuse chinoise by Dai Sijie, the story centres on two boys, Luo and Ma, university students from bourgeois backgrounds who are sent to a remote mountain village in Sichuan province for three years of re-education during the Cultural Revolution. Amid the physical and intellectual hardships they are forced to endure, both fall in love with a beautiful local girl, granddaughter of an old tailor and known to everyone as the Little Seamstress.
During these years of intellectual oppression, the three find solace and liberation in a secret cache of forbidden books by classic Western authors, among whom their favourite is Honoré de Balzac. In attempting to woo the Little Seamstress and to teach her of things she had never imagined, the students start a journey that will profoundly change her perspective on her world and theirs. An evocative and luminously shot paean to a time long past and to the realisation that change can bring freedom.
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