Purple Sunset

Towards the end of the Second World War three people are left inside a forest: a woman officer of the Soviet army, a Chinese peasant and a Japanese schoolgirl. All three are wary of one another and they have no language in common; even so, the only way out of the forest is to walk together. The enmity taught by the war and the necessity brought by hunger and exhaustion collide along the road. The film does not reduce these three to the countries they stand for, yet it does not erase the mark of where they come from either. The account looks for the real price of war not at the front but in those who have fallen away from it. Fu Dalong and Chie Maeda appear in Feng Xiaoning’s hundred and seven minute Chinese film, completed in 2001.