Dam Street

Running time: 93 mins

Xiao-Yun is a sixteen-year-old high school student living in a small riverside town in China's southwestern Sichuan province. A clumsy teenage love affair gets Yun pregnant, and what at first is only a nuisance that she can?t get rid of soon becomes a mortal sin hushed away. Yun has violated China?s rigid morals and stigmatized herself for life. She and her boyfriend Wang Feng are expelled from school. He leaves her after convincing his sister Wang Zheng-Yue, to help Yun give birth to her baby, then give it up for adoption.

Ten years later, Yun is trained as a beautiful Sichuan Opera performer, but resigned to singing in a crass local musical troupe. Her pregnancy is apparently forgotten, but she is still an object of scrutiny, an errant element in a perfectly constructed society and the target of derision for the people in her town. But then she meets ten-year-old Xiao-yong, one of her mother?s students, who is precociously interested in protecting her. There is a strange emotion he feels but can?t articulate?one more mature would call it ?love?.

The past and present meet to produce Li Yu?s captivating and unique story or love and friendship. Her characters? souls, minds and actions are masterfully conveyed through beautiful cinematography and outstanding performances. Dam Street is an immensely touching and captivating story of love and marginalization created with Li?s skilled, caring directorial hand.

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