Director's statement

The modern city, crowded and chaotic, can grow around us like an enclosure, making it impossible for us to see the world and our lives for what they are. Our world is changing so rapidly and with such ferocity that sometimes we can’t catch up. Outside the old urban village slums in booming Chinese cities like Guangzhou, brand new skyscrapers rise up like massive walls closing in. For some poor residents of these islands in the city, these walls represent hope and the future. Others find in them a false sense of security. But as survival becomes harder and harder, our very humanity is exposed, raw and naked. In a real prison behind walls that enclose, a policeman personally tormented uses his poetry to violate the dignity of his prisoners and rape his own society. The policeman develops an emotional connection with a female inmate, and a stick of red lipstick becomes a symbol of their pursuit of real and tangible love and meaning. In my view, the city, the urban village and the prison cell are kindred spaces. The people in these environments all face the same predicament. They glimpse what is humanizing and real, but it remains totally beyond their grasp. They are surrounded on all sides by falsehood, deception and evil. In the medium of film, I have found a means of expressing my personal philosophy of life, exploring how our wanton pursuit of material happiness inevitably sinks us into a tragic and pointless cycle of grasping.