film

The Road

Bertha Journalism

Director

Zhang Zanbo

 

Production support

 

For 3 decades, the whole world has witnessed China’s fast economic development. Skyscrapers are rising in big and small cities, bridges are built across rivers and gulfs, high-speed railways are extending to all directions. Especially after the Chinese government issued its 600 billion US dollar infrastructure plan to fight against the 2008 world economic crisis, the landscape of this planet’s largest population is in dramatic changing. But behind this landmark miracle, stories of the work forces and common residents are rarely told.

Long Synopsis:

A highway is waiting to go through a quiet village in Hunan, a province in central China where Chairman Mao was born. Due to the high cost of construction, numbers of migrants who live on road work and various of construction machines rush to here like the tide. In the following four years, no matter cold or hot, they will root in this strange place for interests.

They will pay sweat and blood, even their lives. With their arrival, local village and peasants are forced to change their lives: land acquisition, house relocation, temple reconstruction, as well as subtle and enduring impulsion to people and morality. Road workers and local people, as two different groups, are closely connected in life and feat.

They impact each other, some happy, some sad, some bitter, some sweet. However with the extension of the high way and finally to the end of the project, many hidden interest lines and hidden rules about road construction of the nation are unveiled, together with the shocking truth and emerging secrets.