AllMovie

A dedicated teacher making some difficult decisions in her life discovers someone is playing games with the future of her students in this drama from China, which was inspired by a true story. Qu (Qu Fengqin) works as a schoolteacher in a small island community near a large nature preserve. While Qu has a tiny budget to work with and the schoolhouse is a tumbledown shack, she cares deeply for her students and her charges have traditionally earned excellent marks on the annual State-imposed exams. Qu's daughters, however, live with their father in a nearby city, and she thinks they would fare better if they had a closer relationship with their mother. With this in mind, Qu applies for a teaching position in the city, and she's told she should be a shoo-in given her record. However, when Qu sees the results of the standardized tests -- which, as tradition mandates, were proctored by the village leader (Zhou Haichun) without the teacher being present -- she's shocked to see that all of her students have failed. Qu soon suspects that someone sabotaged the testing, but who would do such a thing, and why?