Karamay 2010

The possible conspiracy surrounding the 1994 theatre fire that took the lives of 323 people in Xinjiang Province - most of them schoolchildren, none of them government officials or business leaders at the event - isn't the real subject of Xu Xin's moving and compelling epic documentary. Shot in stark, steady black and white, the parents of children who died in the disaster are given an arena to finally voice their rage, fear, self-loathing and frustration in an exhaustive study of the lingering emotional impact of the tragedy over a decade later.