In Their Teens

“Peanut” just turns 19, and with his father’s untimely death and his mother leaving them, he lives with his uncle and older brother in a Sanheyuan compound, though they are not close. The absence of his parents makes him start to work and fend for himself at an early age. High-risk jobs are their only option: shipping spirit money, spraying pesticides, even ones in legal grey areas.

These young people are eager to turn their lives around, but life is ever-changing. Sometimes, they are like grownups, and other times, they are not mature enough. When they join the workforce and start a family at an earlier age, will their children share the same fate?

The director follows these young people’s daily lives to see how they find their own agency and how they deal with confusion when facing hardships in reality; he captures the characters’ sensitiveness towards their own and others’ feelings, to show their true colors other than the tags imposed on them from the society.