A touch of the personal

Director Zhou Quan's award-winning film about a 10-year-old boy's joys and sorrows is set to hit mainland screens later this week. Xu Fan reports.

Loneliness has haunted Zhou Quan since he was a child, but it also is the young filmmaker's inspiration for his directorial debut feature, End of Summer.

The movie's world premiere was at the 22nd Busan International Film Festival in October 2017, and it won the KNN award there. It was the only Chinese-language movie to win at that year's South Korean event.

On Friday, or one week ahead of Children's Day, the 105-minute movie about the growing pains of a child will open across the Chinese mainland.

The film's cast comprises teenager star Rong Zishan and veteran performers Zhang Songwen, Tan Zhuo and Taiwan actor Ku Pao-ming.

The film, set in the summer of 1998, is about a 10-year-old boy's joys and sorrows in the waterside city of Shaoxing in Zhejiang province.

In the movie, fifth-grader Gu Xiaoyang loves soccer but his hobby is frowned upon by his father, who, like most Chinese parents then, sees sports as a distraction from homework.

Gu discovers his father has a crush on a young English-language teacher.

But all settles down when the boy befriends a grandfather-like neighbor, a soccer fanatic who becomes his coach. And the boy's father returns to his wife, a local Yueju Opera performer who chooses to forgive him.

Zhou's maiden feature reflects his nostalgia for the past.

As the only child in his family in Shaoxing, the director, who was born in 1987, says he grew up with "the inherent yet unable-to-resist emotion of loneliness" like most Chinese youngsters of his generation, who were raised under China's family-planning policy.

"When the adults pin all their hopes on one child, it is natural to see him turn rebellious under the stress," Zhou says. "In my movie, I hope to explore the typical parent-child tension in Chinese families."

Zhou's loneliness was exacerbated when he was sent to a Melbourne middle school in 2005, embarking on a decadelong journey of studying abroad.

In his first year abroad, Zhou lived with a Chinese-Australian family and he was surrounded by schoolmates who were locals.

"No matter where I went, I was in a minority. I felt lonely and isolated," he says.