The Road Home

The Road Home (1999) is a Chinese drama by Zhang Yimou that you can watch online on iFILM. Shot in northern China with Zhang Ziyi in her film debut, it tells a small, deliberate love story in two time frames.

Shusheng (Zheng Hao) travels back to the village where he grew up to bury his father, a schoolteacher who spent his entire life there. His mother insists on carrying the coffin home by hand, the old way, no matter the distance or the weather. As Shusheng prepares the procession, he remembers how his parents met: a young woman who cooked a dish and left it at the school gate every day, hoping the new teacher would taste it and look up.

Zhang Yimou shot the flashback sequences in warm widescreen colour and the present-day scenes in muted, near-documentary grey. The shift between them does more than any dialogue could. It is a quiet film that earns its feeling. Stream The Road Home online on iFILM.