The Day Is Over

‘Where have all the parents gone?’ This haunting film from southern China seems to paraphrase Pete Seeger's famous anti-war song about missing flowers. Three young teenage girls − and one silent little sister who faithfully tags along − are in a small mountain village that would be considered a paradise if it wasn’t so poor, backward and unsafe. Most parents are far away in Shenzhen, or some other industrious metropolis. Left to their own devices, to the care of some unfit teacher or ageing grandparent, they are fighting off bullying classmates, sticking together where possible. The girls have to navigate unknown dangers when they decide to borrow money to pay for the long voyage to the city.

Too lyrically observed to be called quasi-documentary, too infused with the raw energy of the superb youthful cast to be really gothic, too sensitive and tragic to be a moralist fable, and indeed, almost too elegantly written to be a debut − yet it is all that.