Sunken Plum

A transgender woman who works in a cabaret in Chengdu receives the unexpected news of her mother’s death, from whom she had been estranged for some time. Regarded by family tradition as the only “son,” she is forced to return to her hometown to arrange the funeral.

The return to her village, located in a rural area of Sichuan, forces her to conceal her identity from neighbors and relatives, confronting the weight of tradition, social rejection, and an intimate wound that remains unresolved.

Sunken Plum emerges from the impact of several videos circulated on social media—later censored—that exposed the violence inflicted on transgender women in China. Drawing from this material, the directors construct a restrained work of fiction that addresses social exclusion, identity conflict, and the clash between tradition and diversity.

The film constitutes the third and final part of the trilogy Invisible Chengdu, together with Ni Jing: Thou Shalt Not Steal (2013) and Floating Melon (2015), a body of works shot in Sichuan and spoken in Southwestern Mandarin that portray marginalized and often unseen realities of contemporary Chinese society.

Since its premiere, the short film has been screened in more than fifty countries and programmed at over one hundred and fifty international festivals and showcases, establishing itself as a key work in the filmmakers’ body of work within social and human rights cinema.