Five Girls and a Rope

is about the collective suicide of five young girls in the traditional Chinese countryside. The girls commit their dramatic deed to avoid their fate as slaves after being married off. They hang themselves on the Day of Immortality (9 September) while still virgins, because they think they will go straight to the ‘heavenly garden’. According to , the fate of women in feudal China was fairly well documented and the girls’ act would not have been so unusual. In the story, examples are given of the fate of other women, the fate they want to avoid. Women sometimes have to marry aged men, they are excluded from social life and sometimes in the case of a difficult birth, the life of the woman is offered up in favour of the baby, especially if it happens to be a boy. The film won the Fipresci Award at the 1992 Rotterdam Festival.