Li Jianguo, a devout Christian, volunteers at a church. He finds out that his only son, Li Huanyu, plans to have sex reassignment surgery. He seeks guidance from others and received various feedbacks. When Liu Mann, one of his son’s transgender friends, commits suicide out of desperation, he renews his effort to better connect with his son...

Many LGBT community members and Christians took part in writing the script and acted in this film.

Huang Jingyi         as    Li Jianguo
Gao Deng             as    Liu Mann
Meng Hao            as    Hou Ling
Yuan Weijie         as    Li Huanyu
Screenplay by Chen Ruirui, Meng Hao, Zhang He, Marlo Bernier, Haohong (Amory) Xu, Qin Ye, Li Dan, Wu Xuejun
Art Direction by Li Weixiong
Photography by Lutz Reitemeier
Editing by Sebastien de Sainte Croix, Renaud Moran, Karl Riedl
Music by Laozai
Sound by Gu Changning

The conflict between a devout Christian father and his transgender son serves as the film’s entry point. I aim to adopt a cool perspective with nuanced emotions to narrate and depict the complex relationship between father and son that is intertwined with social ideology. This is how I defined the film’s creative process. I hope THE RIB realistically introduces to the audience different voices from contemporary Chinese society and human nature.