A teenage girl is imprisoned by her former boyfriend in a motel room and forced to consume drugs and alcohol so she can be sold into human trafficking. Her only hope is her mother, who is determined to rescue her.

A series of snapshots from the life of a fictional actress named Shirley serves to weave together thirteen paintings by Edward Hopper (e.g. “Office at Night”, “Western Motel”, “Usherette”, “A Woman in the Sun”) into a fascinating synthesis of painting and film, personal and political history. Each station in Shirley’s professional and private life from the 1930s to 1960s is precisely dated: It is always August 28/29 of the year in question, as the locations vary from Paris to New York to Cape Cod.

A helpless Taxi driver, a mysterious delivery boy, a 30 years abandoned motel, a touching past, all come together to form a strange tale. One day, a strange passenger Xiao Ma hires a taxi driver named Map King, paying him a huge sum of money to take him to an abandoned old motel. The Chun Lei Motel was mysteriously burnt 30 years before, and has been abandoned since. Very few people remember that the hotel ever existed and no one ever speaks of it. To Xiao Mas’ surprise, the taxi driver actually knows the way to the motel. Ah Fang, was the owner of the motel. She had lived peacefully in the motel with her young son and husband. Seven days after the unfortunate death of her beloved husband, four thieves visited her motel. By the end of that evening, the motel was in flames and everyone involved had vanished. Thirty years after that fateful night, Xiao Ma and the taxi driver reach the motel.

3 years on from hospitalité, Kiki Sugino and Koji Fukada are back again with this socially-conscious film about a 18-year-old girl in-between adolescence and adulthood who spends a summer in a valley and enjoys romance. Sakuko, a 18-year-old girl studying for her university entrance exams, decides to accompany her aunt Mikie on a trip to a seaside town. There she befriends Takashi, a refugee from Fukushima who has dropped out of high school and works at a motel run by Ukichi, a friend of Mikie. In-between childhood and adulthood, Sakuko starts to understand the difficulties of becoming an adult.