The time of their lives

Since 2006, veteran director Zhang Tongdao has trained his lens on a dozen children, continuously documenting their failures and fortunes for a series of films and TV shows, Wang Kaihao reports.

In justifying the length of time it has taken to complete his latest project, veteran director Zhang Tongdao will probably point to his American counterpart, Richard Linklater, who spent 12 years filming the drama, Boyhood.

However, while Linklater's piece was fictional, Zhang's long-term production about human growth is compellingly real.