Freedom is not escape, but return.
In 1998, Lin Xiaoman carved the word “I” into the attic wall, with the frantic whir of her mother’s sewing machine behind her.
She spent half her life struggling to escape her controlling mother, her silent father, and a small town steeped in gossip.
She thought the answer lay somewhere far away, but in a rented city apartment, she broke down sobbing over her mother’s cold diagnosis.
Forced to return and take over the shabby sewing shop, she unexpectedly discovers, among her mother’s long-hidden divorce papers and the red cloth at the bottom of a trunk,
a glimpse of another woman’s dreams, crushed by the times…
This time, can she mend the rift between mother and daughter and find a path of her own?
