The 18th and 19th China Film Huabiao Awards Ceremony was held in Beijing on May 23rd, with 56 shortlisted films and their creators competing for the two Huabiao Awards. Among them, the film “There’s a Good Place in the Tree”, written and directed by Zhang Lei (Zhang Zhonghua), a young teacher of Northwest University School of Fine Arts, won the “19th China Film Huabiao Award for Outstanding Children’s Film”.
China Film Huabiao Award is a governmental award for Chinese films, which is sponsored and organized by China Film Administration. The 18th and 19th China Film Huabiao Awards set up awards for outstanding feature films, outstanding rural films, outstanding ethnic minority films, outstanding children’s films and outstanding youth film creations, respectively, to summarize and commend Chinese film creations.
“There’s a Good Place in the Tree” is a comedy-drama film about a rural elementary school, with a childish narrative that reflects the growth history of a “troubled boy” in the countryside. The film's perspective is directed at a rural elementary school in Shaanxi Province, and the Shaanxi dialect and the genuine interpretation of the children as non-professional actors give the film an air of simplicity and sincerity, with natural humor and wit. The story is told from the children’s point of view, reflecting the different ways different teachers and different education methods are reflected in the children. The overall story not only closely follows the phenomenon of the times, but also is full of childishness and touches the heart.
After winning the China Film Huabiao Award for Outstanding Children’s Film, Zhang Lei said that winning this award is just an exclamation mark for his past youth, and there is still a long article to do in life, “The movie is not my dream, it is just a way for me to love life.”
