In southern China, a young man named Lin Hao (Zijiang Yang) has killed his lover.  Fleeing, he begins his escape northward, across the countryside, toward what he believes to be sanctuary: the tiny, legendary village of Mohe, located on the quiet border between China and Russia, where the Northern Lights are often seen cutting across the sky during the long winter nights   Meanwhile, Rao Hui, a screenwriter in Beijing, sits at his desk narrating that man’s story.  As Lin Hao’s journey unfolds onscreen, Rao Hui (played by the film’s own co-writer Hui himself) narrates in voice-over about the tedium and dissatisfactions of his own life in Beijing (he is one of those “ordinary people trying to escape their boring lives”).  He also describes Lin Hao’s escape to the mythical place of Mohe, at times questioning Hao’s motivations or changing his history, turning his own fictional creation into an enigma.  Hui, too, is drawn to the mysterious village in the north – and once there, he discovers the killer, his own fictional character, lying on a frozen river.  Blurring the lines, not only between the real and the imaginary, but also between fictional and documentary filmmaking, Xiaolu’s debut is a thought-provoking inquiry into the uses and possibilities of narrative, as well as a work of uncommon beauty and delicacy in its own right.