Born in China, Dai Sijie grew up during Mao's Cultural Revolution in the 1970s. The four years he spent in the harsh environment of a "re-education" camp in Sechuan provided the inspiration for his novel The Little Chinese Seamstress. Part-autobiography and part-fiction, this book gained international acclaim, with translations into 25 languages.

     The film version, directed by Dai Sijie (in Cantonese and Mandarin with English subtitles) has been described as being faithful to its source material and features actors Xun Zhou, Kun Chen, Ye Liu, Shuangbao Wang, Zhijun Cong, Hong Wei Wang.

     The story line, highly-reminiscent of Ayn Rand's novel Anthem, follows the fortunes of two friends Luo (Chen Kun) and Ma (Liu Ye) as they undergo "re-education" in Mao's camps. Their days consist of dreary manual labor -- as in Rand's novel. As in Rand's novel, our heroes discover forbidden fruit, in this case a hidden cache of western (French) literature. They pore over the forbidden novels of French authors like, Balzac (their favourite) and others like Tolstoy (unfortunately no Bastiat, Rand, Victor Hugo). They share their literary passions with a fellow inmate, a tailor's daughter (Zhou Xun) and the spirit of the words in these books and the vision of a better world stirs her ambitions to escape her surroundings.

     Chris Wiegand of Box Office Magazine gives the movie a 4 1/2-star rating.

     "With a plot based around rebelling against conventions and staying true to your dreams, this is an impossibly romantic picture and a love letter to escapism through the arts. 'Sometimes a book can affect your whole life,' an elderly gentleman observes. Dai Sijie's ruminative picture has more than the potential to trigger a similar response."

     Li Schoolland, wife of ISIL Director Ken, herself Chinese, describes the depiction of the era of Mao's "Cultural Revolution" to be accurate.