Heatwave on Hawthorn Street
On an old street packed with acacia trees, repair shops, and syrup stalls, documentary director Xu Zhixia returns home and finds that the neighborhood cinema run by her childhood friend Lu Chen is being pushed to the brink by a developer. To save the cinema and the memories of everyone who lives there, she joins a watchmaker, a street vendor, a retired teacher, and a group of young people who refuse to stay silent to make a no-budget 'street documentary.' What they uncover instead is a long-buried truth about a fire from years ago. As demolition, public opinion, and old wounds close in at once, Xu Zhixia must choose between the camera, the truth, and the people she loves, until Hawthorn Street learns how to light one another up again in the hottest summer of all.
Synopsis
On an old street packed with acacia trees, repair shops, and syrup stalls, documentary director Xu Zhixia returns home and finds that the neighborhood cinema run by her childhood friend Lu Chen is being pushed to the brink by a developer. To save the cinema and the memories of everyone who lives there, she joins a watchmaker, a street vendor, a retired teacher, and a group of young people who refuse to stay silent to make a no-budget 'street documentary.' What they uncover instead is a long-buried truth about a fire from years ago. As demolition, public opinion, and old wounds close in at once, Xu Zhixia must choose between the camera, the truth, and the people she loves, until Hawthorn Street learns how to light one another up again in the hottest summer of all.