Soccer became popular in China thanks to the 1998 FIFA World Cup. Xiaoyang, who loves soccer, wants to get onto the school’s team, but his father doesn’t allow him, saying it’s more important for him to study. An old man next door, however, encourages Xiaoyang, and tells him that he will help. Xiaoyang’s mother is always busy as an actress in traditional Chinese drama. In the meantime, his father develops a crush on a temporary teacher at Xiaoyang’s school. Xiaoyang tails the two with suspicion in his eyes. End of Summer captures the father’s generation and his father’s generation through the eyes of fifth-grader Xiaoyang. With his friendship with an old man, lonely after fighting his children, and his excited father enjoying his late life romance, the film portrays the loss and growth of a soccerloving boy in the summer of 1998. This is the debut film for Zhou Quan, a Chinese director who studied at the AFI. Interestingly, Zhang Songwen and Zhou Tan from Lou Ye’s Spring Fever appear together as the boy’s parents. (KIM Young-woo)