Synopsis

It’s a chilly winter in 2011. As the documentary filmmaker of Left-behind Dreams, I left Beijing, and came back to the village in a remote mountainous area in Hunan Province. The children had just moved to the new school building, but the situation was still terrible. Being so poor, so far away from their parents, they never get equal opportunities for education.

2009. A shining spring. The villagers have been applying to reconstruct the village school forever. Finally, they struggle to victory, and get permission.

2010. The new school is built in the autumn. But, the school can’t recruit enough teachers, as it can’t afford it. The one long-suffering teacher can barely make a living. The children’s daily guardians, their aged grandparents or teenager brothers, can barely take care of themselves. No one has told these children how to behave properly, how to be a decent boy or girl. It hurts when you wonder how they can spoil themselves, throwing away all the books. How are their inner selves?

Then the precious teacher gets transferred. The whole school is rotting away.

The three families we had been shooting for the last three years face some heart-breaking moments.

The summer of 2012. Thanks to the help of social media, the children got some sweet presents. But they are still left behind. They need love, they need education, they need attention. But these are scarce.

The Spring Festival of 2013. Will their parents come back to them?