Feet on the back

The short film “Feet on the Back” tells the story of an eight-year-old single-parent primary school boy named Fatbaby, who loves rock music, in a small village with his mother Qiuhong in northwest China in the early 21st century. They saw a six-legged cow in a zoo in the other nearby citiy, and their eyes were opened.
The next day, Fatbaby talked about it with his classmates at school. But a boy named Shuwen whose his father is an English teacher thought he himself is the most knowledgeable person in the class. So any creature that his father didn’t mention doesn’t exist. Challenged by his classmates, Fatbaby decided to prove what he had seen was true.
Fatbaby in the Chinese class, thinking of the six-legged cow, so did not answer Mr. Cow’s question. Mr. Cow mistook Fatbaby’s explanation as contradicting him, so he angrily rebuked Fatbaby in public. Then he called Fatbaby’s mother Qiuhong to school. She saw Fatbaby spoke for his father who had abandoned them. Qiuhong was so angry that she sat on the ground and cried loudly in the schoolyard, attracting a crowd of classmates and making Fatbaby feel humiliated.
Although Fatbaby has experienced a series of blows, he still takes his favorite lyrics book, while walking while singing. Unexpectedly, Fatbaby encountered true campus violence, a few schoolmates snatch and tear his lyric book, tread on his back with the foot, trampled his dignity.
Fatbaby had seen the tutorial of cow killing on the agricultural channel on TV, so he decided to steal the kitchen knife at home to kill the calf of Shuwen’s family and make a six-legged cow to prove himself. However, Fatbaby’s behavior was discovered. The plan to kill the cow failed and the kitchen knife was lost as physical evidence.
Fatbaby is judged to be mentally abnormal and transferred to the fool class with full of mentally retarded children. The classmates call him a murderer. In the fool class, Fatbaby was surprised to hear his deskmate, a boy named Stinky baby without hesitation to believe the existence of the six-legged cow.
On the summer trip, the kids went to the zoo together, they all saw the six-legged cow. All the voices pointed to Shuwen. Fatbaby burst into tears when he saw this. Shuwen’s eyes were filled with despair, and he realized that he is about to experience what Fatbaby has experienced.

Directed by Ruotong Wu and Zhichao Zhang (China)