Yellow Earth

A Communist soldier arrives in a remote village on the Loess Plateau to collect folk songs for the army. He lodges with a peasant widower and his two children — the silent daughter Cuiqiao and her young brother. Initially an outsider in this ancient, fossilized world, the soldier gradually, through his songs and tales of life beyond the hills, stirs a faint hope in the girl for a different fate. The harsh rituals, wordless suffering, and cyclical nature of peasant life collide with the breath of change carried from the outside.