ZHI WU XUE JIA (THE BOTANIST)

13-year-old Arsin, his grandmother and his older brother belong to the Kazakh minority of the Xinjiang region in north-west China. When Arsin is not herding sheep in the idyllic countryside, he collects and analyses plants and immerses himself in fantastic worlds with Meiyu, a Han Chinese girl of the same age. However, the pair's rapprochement is not under a good star: Meiyu is moving to Shanghai. In addition to the magic of growing up in nature, Jing Yi's picturesque debut film also explores the contrast between village life and modern metropolises that characterises China.