In The Shaft, director Chi Zhang tells a story of a family in a mining town in China. In the mining town where it is hard to follow one’s dreams, a father, daughter, and son each strive to pursue their own. Through several episodes of the three family members, the director shows hope and disappointment and how each must compromise with reality. Even though the daughter has a boyfriend who works in the mine, she meets a rich man from a big city whom the father introduced to her in hopes of enabling her to leave the mining town. The son drops out of school and dreams of becoming a singer in a big city, but his dream is not easily realized. The father, who devoted his entire life to his job in the mine, looks back at his life upon retirement. While their lives look as dark and hard as the landscape of the mining town, they keep their hopes. Their lives continue in that way. In his directing debut The Shaft, Zhang warmly describes without any exaggeration the family members who lead their lives without compliant, and the situation of those on the other side of China’s remarkable development. (KIM Byeongcheol)