Hu, Chen and Tian roam the streets as pickpockets. Their boss takes the boys’ catch and provides them with food and drugs in exchange. Once in a while, when the boys get arrested, he pays 350 Yuen to bail them out. The director, Lin Li befriends these kids as he accompanies them on the streets. There she captures the contrasting expressions of indifferent adults and weary children along with discontented storeowners complaining of the vast number of children on the streets nowadays. But in the film everything seems routine, from the kids’ skillful heroin injections into their thighs to the Marlboro cigarettes grasped in their young hands. All paint a dark portrait of China in the present, even more so with the fact that social oppression is being imposed on and expressed through the children. The film’s documentary format makes this reality bleaker. If the sixth generation filmmakers of China have failed to explore the other side of the city despite their efforts to present various images of its capitalization, Three-Five People begins and ends its story from there. (Lee Sang-yong)