Chinese Botanist’s Daughters, The

This award-winning film is based on a true story. The filmmakers were refused permission to film in China and shot in Vietnam instead - the film is banned in China. Dai’s film is the dramatic, lush tale of forbidden love in 1980s China. On a tiny remote island in the north, Chen, an old-fashioned, unforgiving botanist lives with An, his daughter. When feisty half-Russian Mi Ling enters their world as the professor’s intern, the ordered ways of things start to change, most notably for An who begins to question her servile life. Chen who, fearing their growing attraction and seeing his privilege drain away, recruits his own son to change the course of events, a ploy that suits the women - temporarily. An unabashedly romantic film, it will appeal to lovers of grandeur as well as exquisitely detailed, symbolic Eastern film-making.