Dont Cry

The story of a Chinesetrained opera singer living in a remote Kazakh village with her grandmother and her ailing young niece The bulk of the action consists of the steadfast heroine trying to make enough money to get the rare and costly medicine that may save her nieces life What makes the film so thrilling is that this elemental situation allows the director and his cast of nonactors to illuminate the details of everyday life reality and fiction dissolve into each other and the audience achieves a heightened awareness of simple activities like the cooking of a meal teaching a child to count in Chinese and English visits to the doctor or the marketplace Entirely improvised by the filmmaker and his actors