An old man leaves Beijing with his granddaughter to honor a promise made to his dead wife.

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When he realizes time is going by too fast, Zhigen, an old man, leaves Beijing to return to the village of his birth to honor a promise made to his dead wife: the he would free the bird he has kept in a cage for 18 years, his only companion in his old age. Thanks to a combination of circumstances, he takes along his granddaughter Renxing as he travels across the Chinese countryside. And so the old man and the city girl go on a journey through nature and memory…

The first Chinese film directed by a Frenchman, Le Promeneur d’oiseau by Philippe Muyl (Cuisines et dépendance, Le Papillon) tells a simple story about two generations getting to know one another; about a divided China – the ultra-modern and the decidedly rural. But beyond the magnificent natural settings and far from European clichés about Asia, this film is content with following a very conventional trajectory that is touching but too discrete.