# Little Moth (血蝉)
**Little Moth** (血蝉, *Xue chan*) is a 2007 Chinese independent drama film directed and written by Peng Tao, adapted from Bai Tianguang's novel of the same title. It follows an eleven-year-old girl, Xiao Ezi, whose father sells her to a poor couple who put her to work as a street beggar despite a blood disease that has left her unable to walk.[1](https://www.asiapacificscreenawards.com/films/little-moth) The film premiered at the Locarno International Film Festival and went on to win the Golden Pyramid at the [Cairo International Film Festival](https://www.edgepedia.org/cairo-international-film-festival), among other international awards.[2](https://bkso.baidu.com/item/%E8%A1%80%E8%9D%89/8923674?fromModule=lemma_inlink)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Original title / director | 血蝉 (*Xue chan*), directed and written by Peng Tao, from the novel by Bai Tianguang[1](https://www.asiapacificscreenawards.com/films/little-moth) |
| Country, year, runtime | China, 2007, 99 minutes[3](https://www.dgeneratefilms.com/catalog/little-moth) |
| Language | Hubei dialect, spoken by a cast of non-professional actors[3](https://www.dgeneratefilms.com/catalog/little-moth) • [2](https://bkso.baidu.com/item/%E8%A1%80%E8%9D%89/8923674?fromModule=lemma_inlink) |
| Principal cast | Zhao Huihui (Xiao Ezi), Han Dequn (Guihua), Hong Qifa (Luo Jiang), Zhang Lei (Xiao Chun), Xu Zelin (Yang)[4](https://www.viennale.at/en/films/xue-chan) |
| World premiere | 5 August 2007, Locarno International Film Festival, "here and elsewhere" section; the only Chinese film among the 19 in that section[5](https://www.1905.com/mdb/film/1970361/) |
| Major awards | NETPAC Award at the 60th Locarno; Golden Pyramid at the 31st Cairo International Film Festival; Silver Award, digital competition, Hong Kong International Film Festival; Best Film, Bucharest International Film Festival[2](https://bkso.baidu.com/item/%E8%A1%80%E8%9D%89/8923674?fromModule=lemma_inlink) |
| Purchase price in the story | $140 according to the US distributor dGenerate Films and Yimovi; 1,000 yuan according to the Viennale festival catalog[3](https://www.dgeneratefilms.com/catalog/little-moth) • [6](https://www.yimovi.com/movies/little-moth-2) • [4](https://www.viennale.at/en/films/xue-chan) |
## Spoilers
### Plot
Luo Jiang and his wife Guihua, a poor middle-aged couple with no children, travel in Hubei province to buy Xiao Ezi, an eleven-year-old girl nicknamed "Little Moth." Her mother has died and her father, an unemployed gambler and drinker, cannot look after her. The girl suffers from a blood disease, described in the film as "blood cicada sores" (血蝉疮), that has cost her the use of her legs, and the couple's motive is commercial: a sick or disabled child is expected to draw more sympathy money from passers-by than an able-bodied beggar.[6](https://www.yimovi.com/movies/little-moth-2) • [2](https://bkso.baidu.com/item/%E8%A1%80%E8%9D%89/8923674?fromModule=lemma_inlink)
The marriage splits over the girl. Luo Jiang treats her purely as an investment and refuses to buy her medicine, while Guihua develops a maternal attachment and secretly brews herbal remedies for her behind her husband's back.[1](https://www.asiapacificscreenawards.com/films/little-moth) • [7](https://screenanarchy.com/2009/10/little-moth-review.html) On the streets the couple encounters Yang, a fellow child exploiter who uses a one-armed boy, Xiao Chun, himself sold three times, to beg. When the adults are momentarily distracted, the two children run away together, Xiao Chun carrying the girl on his back; their employers consider the children nearly worthless and do not bother to chase them, but Guihua leaves her husband to search for the girl she has come to love.[4](https://www.viennale.at/en/films/xue-chan) • [1](https://www.asiapacificscreenawards.com/films/little-moth)
The escape does not end the danger. The children fall in with Zhong, a woman who takes the girl to a hospital hoping to cure her and use her as a humanitarian prop for her public image, but abandons her on learning that treatment would require a costly amputation.[6](https://www.yimovi.com/movies/little-moth-2) • [2](https://bkso.baidu.com/item/%E8%A1%80%E8%9D%89/8923674?fromModule=lemma_inlink) Around them move protection-money thugs, Yang's organ-trafficking ring with its accomplice, a hospital doctor, and Luo Jiang's uncle, a local crime boss. The Yimovi teaching notes describe the film as highlighting the absence of effective child protection and the weakness of legal and medical-ethical checks on the doctors involved.[6](https://www.yimovi.com/movies/little-moth-2)
## Production and style
**A near-zero budget.** Peng Tao shot the film with a hand-held digital camera, unmodified street locations, natural lighting, long takes, and a cast drawn entirely from non-professionals, in a style the distributors describe as documentary-like and the Viennale catalog compares to the semi-ethnographic early films of Hou Hsiao-hsien.[3](https://www.dgeneratefilms.com/catalog/little-moth) • [4](https://www.viennale.at/en/films/xue-chan) • [2](https://bkso.baidu.com/item/%E8%A1%80%E8%9D%89/8923674?fromModule=lemma_inlink) The Baidu Baike entry records the format as HDV, with cinematography by [Huang Yi](https://www.edgepedia.org/huang-yi), himself a first-time cinematographer, and production by Zeng Wenwen, a [Peking University](https://www.edgepedia.org/peking-university) law graduate producing independently for the first time.[2](https://bkso.baidu.com/item/%E8%A1%80%E8%9D%89/8923674?fromModule=lemma_inlink)
The director, Peng Tao, was born in Beijing in 1974 and graduated from the literature department of the Beijing Film Academy; his short film *Story* (2002) won an award at the Beijing Student Film Festival, and his 2006 film *Red Snow* was a docu-drama set in rural Shanxi during the [Cultural Revolution](https://www.edgepedia.org/cultural-revolution).[6](https://www.yimovi.com/movies/little-moth-2) Sources disagree on where *Little Moth* falls in his filmography: Baidu Baike calls it his first feature-length film,[2](https://bkso.baidu.com/item/%E8%A1%80%E8%9D%89/8923674?fromModule=lemma_inlink) while Yimovi and the ScreenAnarchy review call it his second feature, following *Red Snow*.[6](https://www.yimovi.com/movies/little-moth-2) • [7](https://screenanarchy.com/2009/10/little-moth-review.html)
The film's treatment of its subject is deliberately unsentimental. The ScreenAnarchy review notes that even morally bankrupt characters are never painted as outright monstrous, and that judgment is left to the viewer; the Yimovi notes describe a narrative style that is plain and unvarnished, without flashbacks or psychological elaboration, told predominantly from the children's point of view.[7](https://screenanarchy.com/2009/10/little-moth-review.html) • [6](https://www.yimovi.com/movies/little-moth-2)
## Festival run and awards
*Little Moth* premiered on 5 August 2007 in the "here and elsewhere" section of the Locarno International Film Festival, a section newly created that year for films capturing contemporary social events, and was the only Chinese film among the 19 selected there.[5](https://www.1905.com/mdb/film/1970361/) At the same festival it won the NETPAC (Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema) award.[2](https://bkso.baidu.com/item/%E8%A1%80%E8%9D%89/8923674?fromModule=lemma_inlink) It was also selected for the Dragons and Tigers program of the Vancouver International Film Festival.[5](https://www.1905.com/mdb/film/1970361/)
The awards accumulated through 2007 and 2008: the Golden Pyramid in the international digital feature competition at the 31st Cairo International Film Festival in 2007; in 2008, the Silver Award in the digital competition of the Hong Kong International Film Festival, the Peace Film Award at the Tromsø International Film Festival in Norway, and Best Film, Best Director, Best Debut, and the FIPRESCI jury critics' prize in the international competition of the Bucharest International Film Festival in Romania.[2](https://bkso.baidu.com/item/%E8%A1%80%E8%9D%89/8923674?fromModule=lemma_inlink) The Asia Pacific Screen Awards record a nomination for Achievement in Directing for Peng Tao.[1](https://www.asiapacificscreenawards.com/films/little-moth) The film was later screened in more than forty countries and regions.[2](https://bkso.baidu.com/item/%E8%A1%80%E8%9D%89/8923674?fromModule=lemma_inlink)
## Reception
Critics grouped the film with a realist strand of independent Chinese cinema. Robert Koehler, writing in *Variety*, said it "melds the anger and storytelling scope of Dickens, the doc-influenced immediacy and sensitive gaze of the Dardenne brothers, and the best tendencies of recent Chinese cinema," and Shelly Kraicer of the Vancouver International Film Festival called it "a nearly perfect little film."[3](https://www.dgeneratefilms.com/catalog/little-moth) The ScreenAnarchy review compared its world to Li Yang's *Blind Shaft*, describing a China where "capitalism gets taken to naked, ruthless extremes," while crediting the film's tiny budget and lack of pretension with turning potentially melodramatic material into something riveting.[7](https://screenanarchy.com/2009/10/little-moth-review.html) A German journalist quoted in the Chinese coverage described it as "真实，自然，美丽" (real, natural, beautiful).[2](https://bkso.baidu.com/item/%E8%A1%80%E8%9D%89/8923674?fromModule=lemma_inlink)
The film's commercial release was limited. It received a theatrical release in France, and in North America it circulated through the dGenerate Films catalog of Chinese independent film, with a theatrical screening at the Wisconsin Film Festival in April 2008.[6](https://www.yimovi.com/movies/little-moth-2) • [3](https://www.dgeneratefilms.com/catalog/little-moth) • [8](https://letterboxd.com/film/little-moth/) A DVD with English, traditional Chinese, and simplified Chinese subtitles was issued in Taiwan in 2008.[9](https://search.worldcat.org/title/Little-moth/oclc/496334392)
## References
1. [Little Moth (Xue Chan), Asia Pacific Screen Awards](https://www.asiapacificscreenawards.com/films/little-moth)
2. [血蝉（2007年彭韬执导的电影）, Baidu Baike](https://bkso.baidu.com/item/%E8%A1%80%E8%9D%89/8923674?fromModule=lemma_inlink)
3. [Little Moth (Xue Chan), dGenerate Films catalog](https://www.dgeneratefilms.com/catalog/little-moth)
4. [Xue Chan / Little Moth, Viennale (Vienna International Film Festival)](https://www.viennale.at/en/films/xue-chan)
5. [血蝉 Little Moth (2007), 1905电影网](https://www.1905.com/mdb/film/1970361/)
6. [Little Moth, Yimovi, Chinese Film and Medical Humanities](https://www.yimovi.com/movies/little-moth-2)
7. [Little Moth review, ScreenAnarchy (Matthew Lee, 2009)](https://screenanarchy.com/2009/10/little-moth-review.html)
8. [Little Moth (2007), Letterboxd](https://letterboxd.com/film/little-moth/)
9. [血蝉 = Little moth, WorldCat](https://search.worldcat.org/title/Little-moth/oclc/496334392)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 2000s › Biographical and historical drama films 2000s › Released 2006 to 2009*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*
License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license