Blind Date

Blind Date is a documentary film about a young woman from rural China named Chun Cao Zhao who is pressured into marriage through a tradition known as blind dating. The film begins in Guangzhou, a sprawling metropolis in Southern China, where she has been living for the past ten years, and is just days away from returning home for her wedding. As she slowly says goodbye to city life, the life she wants to keep, she reveals to the camera her feelings toward her fianc, her thoughts on the impending wedding and her own struggles to find a boyfriend. As the film follows her back home we intimately witness the sacrifices she is forced to make in order to appease her parents and the greater instrument of Chinese culture. The film examines and contrasts contemporary China with traditional China and displays the varying roles of each gender in both rural and urban settings. The film concludes with her arranged marriage and a short follow-up with her new husband six months after the wedding.