Brief History of a Family

A middle-class family’s fate becomes intertwined with their only son’s enigmatic new friend in post one-child policy China, putting unspoken secrets, unmet expectations, and untended emotions under the microscope.

After an incident at their private school, Wei, an only son from a middle-class family, and Shuo, a quiet, highly perceptive boy, find themselves connected through some mysterious energy that draws them intimately into each other’s lives. In his feature debut, writer and director Jianjie Lin elegantly unfurls a story where, just under the surface of family dinners, polite manners, and daily school and extracurricular activities, lie dark truths and hidden yearnings threatening to explode into sight.