Giacomo travels to Wencheng County to bring his late father’s ashes back to his hometown. There he stays at his grandfather’s house. The old man becomes Giacomo’s guide through the forgotten paths of his native culture, which now looks so distant from the daily life of a European twenty-something.

This graduation project by Xin Alessandro Zheng is a meditative and deeply personal portrait of the relationship between a grandfather and a grandson, and their search for identity. With cleverly lit, crisp cinematography, the gentle pace of the short resembles the movement of leaves in autumn.