Freely adapted from Gabriel García Márquez's Chronicle of a Death Foretold, the film follows the investigation of a local teacher's murder in a small and desperately poor rural village, the story of the crime gradually pieced together from the fragmented memories of witnesses forced to testify at an inquest. Sharing with her Fifth Generation colleagues Chen Kaige and Tian Zhuangzhuang a remarkable eye for the barren landscapes of northern China and a fascination with small-town life — especially those enduring superstitions that Communism failed to erase — director Li Shaohong also introduces several formal innovations, particularly in storytelling structure, that remain unprecedented in Chinese cinema.

When Yan'ni starts college she believes she is embarking on a new life away from her family, and she is, but not the new beginning she anticipates. Once at school, she immediately meets Muyu and falls in love with him. What she does not know is that from the moment he met her Muyu began an intricate deception that will lead to the loss of her child and the future she believes in.