When his mother suddenly vanishes, a young boy wanders the valley wasteland along the YellowRiver with only a letter from his mother in his possession. He ends up at a coal mining village where he finds a job. But when the backbreaking work and the surrounding violent adults takes their toll on him, the boy runs away and joins a band of similarly aged, boy thieves. He descends into a world of drug addiction, pushing his way through grown-ups living in an opium cave, sometimes tumbling down cliffs. The film follows the destitute labyrinth the poor boy’s life becomes, presenting an intimate account of everything he experiences and feels. He occasionally watches adults group dance in the city park, and the fireworks going off, but eventually returns to the wasteland and opens closed doors to a vast landscape that spreads out before his eyes. The endless maze-like world of the young boy represents a child’s fear of breaking away from its mother to grow up. The uncanny, dream-like scenery, shot in black and white, seemingly suggest the filmmaker’s search for small pieces of beauty within a miserable reality. A series of emotions from fear, concern, anger, despair, depravity to joy and hope the boy experiences during the course of an entire day are what he will have to endure during his lifetime. And this is what the film compactly captures. (Minah JEONG)