Day Dreaming

Zhu Tong has just moved into the third grade at a new school; he is bottom of the class and never stops getting into trouble. Ten thousand daydreams run through his head every day: the class teacher is chasing aliens down the corridor, the flowers in the grass are talking. The film follows a single school day and goes on without separating what the boy sees from what is happening. Wang Zichuan wrote, directed and acted in it. Children rather than adults are at the centre of the story, which is uncommon in Chinese films made about childhood. It opened on 25 May 2024; Yue Hao won best actor in the Asian new talent section at the Shanghai film festival, and the film took best director at the FIRST festival.