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• Cinando
• 4 results

• Berlin EFM 2016 (Premiere)
• Cannes 2016 (Line up)
• Busan 2016 (Line up)
• AFM 2016 (Line up)

Year of production : 2015

Director(s) : Haofeng XU
Writer(s) : Haofeng XU
Cast : Fan LIAO, Jia SONG, Wenli JIANG, Shih-Chieh CHIN, Jue HUANG, Yang SONG

Producer(s) : Xiaoxi LOU, Huilong ZHU

China, 1932. Tianjin is the capital of the martial arts world. Newcomers from the provinces visit the city to challenge fighters from the other martial arts schools. Chen Shi, from a once-wealthy Cantonese family that has been devastated by war, travels to Tianjin after the death of his martial arts teacher to continue his master's teaching and restore his family's fortune. But to establish his own school, he must successfully train a disciple to challenge and defeat fighters from eight different martial arts schools in Tianjin. The process is expected to take three years. He partners with Zheng Shan'ao, Tianjin's leading martial artist who finds him a local disciple, and he has a marriage of convenience with Zhao Guohui, a woman with a damaged reputation after having a mixed-race child out of wedlock. One day, when Chen encounters the talented martial artist Geng Liangchen, he realises that he can shorten the process to just one or two years. A year later, Geng challenges the other martial arts schools on Chen's behalf only to be killed by Lin Xiwen, the lieutenant of a warlord who has arrived in Tianjin to recruit martial artists. Chen now has a crisis of conscience: to establish his own school or avenge Geng’s death. His decision to kill Lin at his school's opening ceremony is however exploited by the masters of the city's other martial arts schools who have set Chen up as a scapegoat so that they can fulfill their own political ambitions.