Peng Fei adapts a novel by Shuang Xuetao for his fourth feature, an epic idealistic tale spanning the late twentieth century into China’s reform era. Li Mingqi is an ordinary worker who inherits his father’s impossible dream: to build a machine and fly. An early experiment goes wrong and disables his brother-in-law, a debt that shadows everything after. As the country opens up, Li and his wife transform an abandoned factory space into a dance hall and float a hot-air balloon to draw curious foreigners. Still, the sky keeps calling. When his nephew falls gravely ill, Li straps on his homemade flying machine one last time. Selected for the main competition at Tokyo.