Distant Sunflower Fields

An iron-willed mother, an ageing grandmother, a pair of mismatched dogs and 90 mu of less-than-ideal farmland: these are Li Juans companions on the steppes of the Gobi Desert. Writing out of a yurt under Xinjiangs endless horizons, she documents her familys quest to extract a bounty of sunflowers amid the harsh beauty and barren expanses of Chinas northwest frontier. Success must be eked out in the face of lifes unnegotiable realities: sandstorms, locusts and death. While this small tribe is held at the mercy of these headwinds, they discover the cheer and dignity hidden in each other. But will their ceaseless labours deliver blooming fields of green and yellow? Or will their dreams prove as distant as they are fragile?