I Hope You Are Well (2020)

A village in Yunnan province, southern China, 2004. Basket-weaver Zhang Guohua (Du Yiheng) lives with his seven-year-old foster-daughter Zhang Wang (Zhu Ziyue), to whom he is devoted. But he barely makes ends meet, and the two exist on a frugal diet. Zhang Wang is top of her class at the local primary school but in any kind of physical exercise runs out of breath very easily. One day she starts having nose bleeds, and the local doctor tells Zhang Guohua to take her to Kunming, the provincial capital, for a full checkup. There she’s diagnosed with acute leukaemia, which will cost around RMB300,000 to treat. Zhang Guohua’s sister, Cuihua (Wang Like), keeps Zhang Wang company in hospital, where she’s also befriended by an idealistic volunteer nurse, Xiaoxia (Lu Qiuhong), who’s just started work there, and by Titi (Du Yuchen), a child in the next bed, and Titi’s artist father (Hou Shuai), who sketches Zhang Wang and encourages her to draw. Back in the village some locals, like the butcher Qiangzi (Zhao Zhizhe), lend Zhang Guohua some money but the total is only a paltry RMB11,000. Local businessman Sui Dafu (Liu Liu) says he has no cash to lend but is owed RMB80,000 by a foreman (Wu Zhixiong) – which Zhang Guohua can have if he can get it. Zhang Guohua tries but is beaten up by the foreman’s gang. Desperate, Zhang Guohua tries to sell one of his kidneys for RMB30,000 but ends up scammed. Meanwhile, Xiaoxia, upset by the iniquity of the system, considers giving up her job. She takes her cousin, journalist Wang Xiaoyue (Ma Yuyao), to meet Zhang Guohua; the latter writes a newspaper article about the case, which starts to attract media interest.