Bangzi Melody

1982. The dead of winter. In a village in northeastern China, peanut farmers get wind of momentous changes afoot from an accidental broadcast on the commune’s public address system. Land reform has been ordered from up high, and they are to welcome this upheaval in their lives by staging a traditional opera for visiting cadres. But what to do about Mad Kui, the commune outcast who carries their night soil, yet daily he tests the villagers and embarrasses his own son with his lunatic antics. How is the village’s new age to dawn when its revolutionary past bestowed a madman with the most coveted land around? (Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival)