A CLASS APART
Li Junlin fulfilled a long-held ambition to direct his first feature highlighting the struggle of China’s ‘left-behind’ children. reports.
When director Li Junlin read the news that the number of China’s “left-behind” children was estimated to have surpassed 60 million, the filmmaker recalled his early years as one of them.
It also became the major impetus for him to produce A Class of One, Li’s directorial feature debut, which examines the pain and struggle of a group of vulnerable youths seen from the perspective of a countryside schoolteacher, who has devoted his life to rural education.
In the 106-minute movie, the protagonist child’s father dies in an accident while laboring in a city, prompting his mother, who is no longer able to bear her poverty-stricken life, to also leave home.
The local teacher, portrayed by award-winning actor Sun Haiying, infuses the child’s miserable life with hope and warmth, and insists on teaching him right up until his graduation, despite the fact he is the last remaining student at a school facing closure.
A Class of One won several international awards, including the 2016 Special Jury Remi Award at the 49th Worldfest Houston International Film Festival in the United States.
In the same year, the movie was recommended by the country’s largest distributor, the China Film Group, to join a program of releases showcasing quality domestic movies overseas. The movie went on general release in Chinese mainland theaters on Tuesday.
For Li, the movie’s release was the culmination of a decadelong dream to produce a movie, which he hopes will raise more public awareness about a long-overlooked section of society — rural youngsters who face a lack of proper parenting and love.
Over the past few decades, China has seen a robust growth in its economy, owing in no small part to the efforts of millions of rural laborers who migrate to find work in cities.
This has at the same time created a shared plight for young people in some of China’s most poverty-stricken areas, who have been dubbed the “left-behind” children by domestic media.
These migrant workers are forced to leave their children to grow up alone, or with one parent, or with their grandparents in their rural hometowns, often thousands of kilometers away. Expensive transport costs and heavy workloads combine to prevent these parents from returning home very often, with the majority of them making the trip home just once a year.
“I was born in a village. My father went to work in the city when I was young. He only came back once a year. I missed him so much,” recalls
Li Junlin,