No.7 Cherry Lane

Ziming, a university student, takes a tutoring job in 1967 Hong Kong for Meiling, an 18-year-old girl living with her mother, Mrs. Yu — a woman who fled Taiwan and never quite left her past behind. What starts as a simple arrangement slowly becomes something much more complicated, because Ziming finds himself pulled toward both of them in ways he can't easily sort out. Meanwhile, the city itself is unraveling — riots, political tension, a colony caught between identities — and that outside chaos bleeds into the quiet, charged atmosphere of the Yu household. The film doesn't rush anything. It sits with the confusion, the longing, the way people search for connection when everything around them feels unstable. The animation is worth noting too — it blends 3D rendering with a 2D painterly look that gives the whole thing a slightly dreamlike, literary quality. If you appreciated the slow-burn emotional weight of The Sensualist or the restrained period romance of Fuyu no Semi, this operates in similar territory. It's a movie that rewards patience. There's no grand plot machinery here, just people, complicated feelings, and a city in the middle of something it doesn't fully understand yet — which, honestly, describes the characters too. If you're in the mood for something contemplative and visually distinctive, this is worth the time.