11 Flowers

Children of the Cultural Revolution. An everyday film about the proletarian children in Mao’s China. Wang Han is eleven years old and lives in a small factory township in southern China. The year is 1975, only a year before Mao dies and his Cultural Revolution ends. But this is not a story about the revolution; Wang Han is not aware of the politics. This is more of an existential story. Wang Han lives a free day-to-day life with his friends, until one day he gets picked out to lead the morning martial arts exercises. His mother makes him a cherished new shirt for the task, and one day his new clothing leads him into contact with a murderer. js


The Chinese director Xiaoshuai Wang shot Frozen (1997) under the pseudonym Wu Ming (“No Name”), because of the Chinese restrictions on independent films. Wang is known for his portraits of children and youth, notably So Close to Paradise (1999), Silver Bear winner Beijing Bicycle (2001), and Jury Prize winner in Cannes, Shanghai Dreams (2005).