Your hometown vanished overnight. Your mom left. Reality's optional now.
Hong moves to Chongqing from Yinchuan with her six-year-old daughter Ye after her divorce. Ten years later, Ye is still emotionally attached to her father, but her mother's new boyfriend Liu eventually moves into their house. Ye is confused by Liu's attitude towards her and has a hard time deciphering its ambivalence. This causes her much anxiety. She reminisces about the past, and goes back and forth between a fragmented reality and her dreams, until the day her mother leaves with Liu. She decides to take the path of escape, as her mom did, and return to her hometown. However she soon comes to realize that her hometown had disappeared one night several years ago.
Direction
Zhang Qi blurs dream and waking until you can't trust either
Cinematography
Chongqing's vertical sprawl becomes psychological architecture
Director
Zhang Qi
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Chongqing's notorious urban density — buildings stacked impossible heights — mirrors Ye's fractured psychological state. Director Zhang Qi uses the city's physical overwhelm as character.
The title 'Single Cycle' refers to both Ye's repetitive dream structure and a washing machine setting — domestic routine as inescapable loop. Her mother's departure breaks the cycle by abandoning it entirely.
CN
