Fish Under the Ice

This film tells the story of an old man in an old industrial city in Northeast China during the seven days before the start of winter fishing. A few years after her husband's death, 82-year-old Zhao Lihua suffered from mild depression. She tried to take a dip in the employee bathhouse, but was turned away and humiliated several times. His son Zhu Hongbing struggled to find two women to accompany his mother in the bath. A seemingly simple daily life turned out to be extremely difficult for the mother and son. In the end, my mother never realized her wish to take a bath in the employee bathhouse, even though she had worked in this factory all her life. For Zhao Lihua, "taking a bath" is a form of self-cleansing like baptism, and leaving with dignity and "peace" is her last choice...