CHINESE movie “So Long, My Son,” winning acting awards for its male and female leads at the Berlin Film Festival last month, will open in cinemas all over the country Friday.

Directed by Wang Xiaoshuai, the three-hour-plus family saga focuses on two ordinary Chinese families and the vicissitudes of their lives, telling their personal stories as they change and adapt. The epic film swept the top acting prizes at the Berlin festival Feb. 16 with its two lead actors Wang Jingchun and Yong Mei pocketing the Silver Bears for Best Actor and Best Actress respectively.

The film starts with a tragic incident that strikes a family living during the 1970s. A Chinese couple loses their only son, who drowned while playing with his friend. The family then adopts another little boy, eking out a living in a southern coastal town in Fujian Province.

Actor Wang Jingchun showcases extraordinary acting skills in his portrayal of a middle-aged father whose emotional outbursts, not often, but always in critical moments, are astounding. The 46-year-old actor became the second Chinese actor to grab the Best Actor trophy in Berlin, following Liao Fan, who won it in 2014 for the film “Black Coal, Thin Ice.” The film costarring Wang Jingchun also garnered the Golden Bear prize for the festival’s top film in 2014.

Yong’s portrayal of a devastated mother and fragile wife was also moving, and it helped her become the third Chinese actress to bag the Silver Bear award in 24 years. She also had an impressive performance in Chinese film master Hou Hsiao-hsien’s award-winning martial arts piece “The Assassin.”

Variety magazine said the performances “are so empathetic and so rooted in the reality of even the most fraught situation, that contrivances feel more like natural coincidences.”

Through close looks at the ups and downs in each individual’s life, the heart-wrenching film makes a deep bow to the human spirit and highlights the ordinary goodness in everyday life, while acknowledging the character’s powerlessness against all kinds of uncontrollable forces.

Surrounding a central theme of the now-abandoned one-child policy, the film also depicts a chronological panorama of Chinese economic and social development, tracing the immense changes the country has undergone over the last 50 years.

In a previous interview, director Wang Xiaoshuai noted that “It is a big film in that it covers large stretches of space and time, moving from the 1980s to the present, and from the north to the south of China.”

Wang Xiaoshuai is not a newcomer to the Berlinale, where he took home the Jury Prize in 2001 for “Beijing Bicycle,” and picked up the best screenplay for his 2018 work “In Love We Trust.” He revealed that similar themes to his previous works are still closely followed such as “youth” — one of his favorite topics — which is mainly displayed via the development of the family’s adopted teenage boy, played by Wang Yuan, member of popular Chinese boy band TFBoys.(CGTN)