Adapted from Zhou Meisen’s novella, this wartime drama follows Chinese POWs, Central Army scouts Tian and Liu alongside Eighth Route Army cavalry captain Meng and soldier Zhang, imprisoned in Japan’s “Death Camp No. 9.” Rival escape plots collide: Sichuan captain Lao Qi’s men tunnel through mine shafts even as Meng’s group plans their own breakout. Camp commandant Major Nagasaki appoints collaborators, tortures and exposes dissenters, and uses a comfort woman to bribe Liu. When guerrilla agent Zhang Mazi is executed, Meng and Zhang Dielong sacrifice themselves under blistering sun to save their comrades. Amid bayonet executions and armed revolt, the prisoners wage a final, desperate battle to smash the camp gates and reclaim their freedom.

Freely adapted from Gabriel García Márquez's Chronicle of a Death Foretold, the film follows the investigation of a local teacher's murder in a small and desperately poor rural village, the story of the crime gradually pieced together from the fragmented memories of witnesses forced to testify at an inquest. Sharing with her Fifth Generation colleagues Chen Kaige and Tian Zhuangzhuang a remarkable eye for the barren landscapes of northern China and a fascination with small-town life — especially those enduring superstitions that Communism failed to erase — director Li Shaohong also introduces several formal innovations, particularly in storytelling structure, that remain unprecedented in Chinese cinema.