Hoping Chen

Featuring seven stories from seven auteurs from around the world, the film chronicles this unprecedented moment in time, and is a true love letter to the power of cinema and its storytellers.

In the middle of preparing his apartment to have Mira live with him, Luc escapes to Svalbard. Stumbling drunk out of an Artic “Oktoberfest”, Luc meets Mike, a stranger who lives in an isolated cabin in the Arctic desert. Mike mysteriously abandons Luc in mid conversation. Intrigued, Luc decides to find Mike. Along the way, he meets Ingrid, a Norwegian teacher. Luc rushes into the footsteps of Mike who remains elusive and volatile, Luc hunts a shadow, his own possibly.

Within the top secret Institute of Physics Problems, the scientist Nikita Nekrasov is visited by his wife and small children. While away from his family the physicist has managed to fall in love with other women. In open conversations with his spouse – in the bedroom, the dining room, and while out walking – he attempts to convince her of the legitimacy of polygamous relationships, and to test the limits of her unconditional love.

It is 1956. Dau is a distinguished Soviet scientist who meets up with the love of his youth – Maria, a Greek actress – during her three day visit to Moscow. They haven't seen each other for 25 years. Dau is a successful and prosperous scientist, but feels excruciatingly dissatisfied with his family life. Through Maria he hopes to regain lost harmony and beauty, but reality intrudes when Nora, Dau's wife, returns home.

Once just a girl from the provinces, Nora is now married to a successful scientist and lives together with her family within the confines of a secret and privileged Moscow institute. Nora is visited by her mother for the first time since her wedding. Her mother closely observes the atmosphere within the couple's home, trying to work out whether her daughter is happy. During the course of their intimate conversations the complexity of their contradictory relationship is revealed.

Wet Season revolves around the life of Ling, a schoolteacher who deals with infertility while having to take care of her infirm father-in-law at home. One of Ling's students, Kok Wei Lun, develops a crush on her during remedial Chinese classes. The two become closer as Wei Lun embraces Ling's extra tutoring.

A young teenage girl finds herself struggling to take care of herself and her younger brother after being abandoned by their single mother with no choice but to live out on the streets.

Far from home, 17-year-old Ying Ling practices for her examination to become a mortician at one of China's largest funeral homes. The everyday routine of this unusual occupation also serves up both humorous and life affirming moments.

Three stories which each focus on one of three types of relationships: family, friendship, and love. The first story is about conflicted manager on a business trip who is intrigued by an elderly worker and investigates his life. The second story is about a young father who receives a letter that brings him to a foreign land, where old emotions come unburied. The last story is about a visiting professor from overseas who sets a student's heart fluttering, while having to deal with his own.

During the late 1990s, a busy working-class Singaporean couple hires a Filipino woman as a maid and nanny to their young son.