SEVENTEEN YEARS

SEVENTEEN YEARS is reportedly the first feature to have shot scenes on location inside an actual Chinese prison, something that would have been unthinkable in the People's Republic, say, 17 years ago. The evolving superpower ? and the lives of its humblest citizens ? is the undercurrent of SEVENTEEN YEARS, a fact-based story of one thoughtless moment and the immense grief that follows. It's the early 1980s and a too-familiar family squabble, this time over a paltry amount of missing money, leads teenager Tao Lan to strike her snobbish stepsister, accidentally killing the girl, her only sibling. In 1998, an adult Tao Lan, with a year left on her jail sentence, is released on a 48-hour furlough for the New Year. Neither of her parents are waiting to greet her. The old apartment has been torn down, no forwarding address. A young female guard, also on leave for the holiday, takes Tao Lan with her to look for the shards of the shattered family and, if possible, attempt to put them together again. For Tao Lan, after spending half her life locked away, sexy billboards and jackets with “USA” on them hint at the new world she can barely grasp. But her mother and stepfather, have they changed as well? (In Mandarin with English subtitles.)