Kindergarten 2004

Directed by Zhang Yiqing

Shot over 14 months, this film records the everyday lives of children at a boarding kindergarten in Wuhan, Hubei Province. It shows how they experience an education overburdened with social and historical background. It catches their moments of laughter and happiness, their struggles against setbacks that they do not always understand, their thoughts about issues that arise both in their own and in the adult world. It is a film that makes everyone laugh, but the naivety of the children is always shown from their own perspective. Deep insights are embedded in the seemingly light-hearted scenes and not only about childhood. For the film is also a metaphor for the adult world. As the opening line of the film says: "They are our children, but maybe they are us ourselves."