Even a fine sketch of a small episode in an ordinary man’s life can embrace the past, present and future of the largest of nations. In 26-year-old poet Gan Bi’s debut a provincial doctor sets off on a pilgrimage to find his brother’s abandoned son and to reunite bygone lovers through the keepsakes entrusted to him. In one mesmeric, forty-minute take, his journey to his native region is transformed into a mystical experience. The hand-held camera starts to live its own life as it scans a stretch several kilometres long, its unpredictable course resembling the meanders of a river. As the doctor reaches a small Chinese town, the twilight is transformed into a magical temporal plane which slowly takes possession of his drifting memory. Kaili Blues is a visionary cinematic poem about the agonising desire to displace the past but also to come to terms with it. The main character’s emotions are intrinsically linked with the lives of the rural inhabitants, who are caught between a troubling history and an auspicious future, between their nostalgia and the turbulent changes affecting their country.