Arts Centre Vooruit, Ghent, Belgium

Yang Jin’s second feature, named after the protagonist Er Dong (‘winter child’), looks like a documentary. Yet the story about several years from the life of a simple country boy looking for his roots adopts almost epic forms. Er Dong lives alone with his devout Christian mother in a small village and will come to no good. Frustrated with his bad behaviour, his mother takes him to a Christian school in the hope that here Er Dong will find rules, order and God and will also hopefully learn a trade. But he only finds a girlfriend, Chang’e. Their misconduct leads to their expulsion and they start an uncertain life together. The harsh realities of work, parenthood and adult life in the tough economic reality of contemporary China don’t make life easy for them. Recurring nightmares that plague Er Dong lead him to a shocking revelation of his own past… “Er Dong” is a realistic and refreshing coming-of-age film whereby the protagonist actually never grows up but falls into a recurring pattern of vice.

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