Wang (Liu Wenqing) in 11 FLOWERS (First Run Features)

Director Wang Xiaoshuai’s autobiographical 11 Flowers turns memories into metaphors. The film closely follows his perspective as an 11-year-old: diving underwater when he swims, clouding the lens when he’s feverish, and peeking between the backs of adults sitting around a fire to overhear adult conversations.

Wang (Liu Wenqing) can only understand pieces of the dramatic events taking place around him. He sees a sad girl, meets a murderer, gets a white shirt just made by his mother and loses the shirt; his friends like him one day and won’t play with him the next; his mother is angry, and his father is covered in blood. We work as hard as Wang to connect the events taking place around him.

Cinematographer Dong Jinsong and editor Nelly Quettier (Holy Motors, Beau Travail) make mysteries out of the adult world by framing their cameras close to Wang’s eyes. The sad girl, only slightly older than Wang, is seen by him only at a distance, so her presence is felt but not understood. He slowly realizes she was molested by the manager of the factory where most people in their rural village work. Her vengeful brother, who Wang meets only once when he steals his pristine white shirt, will come into sharp focus, leaving the same strong impression on viewers as it had on the director’s young mind.

Xiaoshuai’s first films were banned and heavily edited by Chinese censors, leading him to release films anonymously in the 1990s. Still, 11 Flowers is a political film without politics. Its events take place during the waning days of Cultural Revolution, which demanded strict patriotism and obedience, and sent intellectuals like Xiaoshuai’s father, an actor, away from China’s urban centers to work in the remote countryside. Personal acts in the film that do not support the country are violently discouraged by both police and the community through the tactics of fear and shame.

It’s unclear by the story’s end whether Wang understands the connection between the girl, her brother, and the importance of his stolen shirt by a murderer on the run, but we know he will one day. The film ends with his parents finding the first evidence of puberty in his sheets, and they are excited—sexual maturity is a personal impulse outside political control.