Director Jia Zhangke interviews three prominent authors — Jia Pingwa, Yu Hua, and Liang Hong — from the same Shanxi province where Jia also grew up. We hear of the dire circumstances they faced in their villages and towns, from the social revolution of the 1950s through the unrest of the late 1980s.

One of the defining voices of the international arthouse, Jia Zhangke has become the foremost chronicler of China’s rapid transformation through his form-bending cinema. This beautifully shot documentary uses the art of oral history to turn personal memory and literature into the story of a nation.