Striding Into the Wind

Studying to become a sound recordist at a film school in Beijing, Kun (Zhou You) has chosen a much different life than his policeman father and schoolteacher mother. A feckless, volatile young man with no true ambition, Kun really only cares about one thing in life: his ancient, dilapidated old Jeep, which he bought after miserably failing his driver’s test.  With dreams of taking to the open roads of Inner Mongolia, Kun teams up with his laid-back boom operator buddy, Tong (Tong Lin Kai), to help pretentious student director, Ming (Wang Xiao Mu), with his thesis film. As Ming’s film centers around a young Mongolian herdswoman searching for her errant husband at a Beijing amusement park, the team set off for Mongolia’s lush grasslands to capture pickup footage and record ambient grassland sound for the film. But the road they take to get there is full of unexpected twists and turns. More desperate to outrun the trap of adulthood than actually capture anything for the film, this group of disaffected youth slowly begin to realize that not only is the trap set for them is much bigger than they could have ever possibly imagined but it has already ensnared them all. Inspired by his real-life experiences, “Striding Into the Wind” is a 2021 Chinese semi-autobiographical indie film directed by Wei Shu Jun.