River Road
Producer : Li Fang, Cheng Yang
Director : Ruijun Li
Actor : Long Tang，Songtao Guo, Wenxin Bai, Xingchun Ma
Writers : Ruijun Li
Release time : October, 2015 (TBC)
2011, International Film Festival Rotterdam，Hubert Bals Funding
2012, The Global Film Initiative, Script Award
2014, Tokyo International Film Festival, Nomination
2014, SARFT high-quality film project
2015, the 65th Berlin International Film Festival, Crystal Bear Award Nomination
River Road is a story of two Yugur ethnic minority brothers, Adikeer and Bartel, and their journey travelling through the Hexi Corridor of the Silk Road to go home from their grandfather’s home near town to the distant grasslands where their parents live.
In their trek their parents have moved to find pastures to herd their sheep, the brothers are confronted with barren landscapes, abandoned villages, and decaying relics. Their journey becomes a search for their identity as Yugurs. The changing environment of the Corridor exposes the loss of grazing lands to industrialization and traditions to a modern world.
Towards the end of their journey, a chance encounter with an elderly Buddhist lama has profound consequences, and opens up possibilities for the beginning of a new journey that Bartel and Adikeer must undertake, one into unexplored territories from which they can never return to the home of their ancestral past.
