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If every single day, at exactly the same stroke of the clock, one were to perform the same single act, like a ritual, systematic, every day at the same time, the world would be changed.
— The Sacrifice, directed by Andrei Tarkovsky

In The Sacrifice by Soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, there was a scene where the father took his son to the beach to plant a tree and told him a story about a dead tree that came to life. This scene and the story have been lingering in Shi Jin-Hua’s mind ever since he first saw this film in 1987. The story keeps coming back to him in ways that resonate with the …