Silver Bird and Rainbow Fish

“Our family is special”, says filmmaker Lei Lei’s father Lei Jiaqi. On the audio track of this inventive, poignant essay film he starts to talk about the struggles of his family, amid China’s troubled times of the 1960s. When his own father, Lei Ting, is sent to the countryside, he stays behind with his sister and his ill mother. When Mum passes away, and the system forbids Ting to come back to live with his children, the kids are kept in an orphanage.