In China, three unemployed miners in the Shanxi province are looking for work. Their last hope for survival is to join an amusement park show where workers are determined to be clowns.

Set in his hometown of Fenyang, Jia Zhangke’s eccentric hybrid short stars the director’s veteran actors playing fictional versions of themselves. A frenzied job search leads to a comic exploration of the bizarre, novel relationship between China’s cultural traditions and free-reign capitalism.