Event

Fallen City

In China's Sichuan Province, the giant 7.9 magnitude earthquake in 2008 killed 90,000 people, left 374,000 injured and 5 million homeless, and 21 million buildings damaged or uninhabitable. In the mountain town of Beichuan, 20,000 died, leaving families devastated. Of the thousands whose lives were irreparably altered, the stories of three survivors emerge. Peng Xiaoguan, a devoted father, lost his daughter in the rubble. He stays in a house overlooking the disaster site, tending to the family farm while his wife flees town to recover. For Peng and his wife, trauma stands in the way of hope. Divorcee Li Xiaorong devotes herself to caring for her mother and also takes up a job with the neighborhood committee to keep herself busy. But as the mother approaches her last years, Li must find another reason to go on living. And 14 year-old Hong Shihao lost his father. He struggles through school, distanced from his less-than-loving mother. Under constant pressure about his studies, Hong runs away. Eventually he loses his chance to go to university. He will train to become a worker on a factory line assembling TV sets, 200 kilometers away from his hometown. Meanwhile, a New City is being built by the authorities a city that is supposed to offer the survivors a chance at better lives. But they remain torn between life as it was and modernity.

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