The Time to Live and the Time to Die

A young boy named Ah-Hao grows up in Taiwan, where his family relocated from mainland China. Through his innocent gaze, we witness a world woven from family dinners, schoolyard mischief, and first encounters with loss. His grandmother, obsessed with returning to their ancestral home, wanders the lanes searching for the road 'back west.' The rhythms of daily life—playing with friends, his father's sternness, his mother's illness—gradually and irrevocably shape him. Time flows like a river, carrying away childhood's carefreeness and revealing to the adolescent the complexities of growing up and the finality of farewells.