Screened as part of The 14th Raindance Film Festival, Little Red Flowers from Chinese independent director Zhang Yuan is a charming and occasionally unsettling snapshot of one little boy's regimented life at a kindergarten � a snapshot that speaks volumes about adult society.

When four-year-old Qiang is deposited at a residential kindergarten in post-1949 Beijing, his father and teachers assume that it will not be long before the boy falls into line with his little classmates. Qiang is also keen to fit in and to win the little red flowers that are awarded daily for such achievements as not wetting the bed, dressing oneself and going to the toilet. But Qiang's has a nonconformist streak which he cannot subdue � a trait that sets him apart from the crowd and which leads him to mount a rebellion against his strict head teacher Miss Li (Zhao Rui).

The new film from independent filmmaker Zhang Yuan is a charming and amusing vision of institutionalised Chinese childhood, and a beautifully simple critique of the conformity that characterises adult society and behaviour.

At the heart of this film is the fantastic, spirited performance of Dong Bowen as the little rebel Qiang. He brings an irresistible charm to the role, expressing a range of emotion that belies his young age. While Zhang Yuan, whose previous films have addressed societal taboos such as disability and homosexuality, celebrates the independent spirit of Qiang, his critique of conformity is for the most part a light-hearted and affectionate one. The young women teachers are at times harsh in their treatment of their mutinous charge, there is no suggestion of deliberate cruelty, just a well intentioned if misguided belief that it he will be better off when he learns to behave as everyone else does.

Zhang Yuan is in the vanguard of China's most important recent developments and is one of the leading members of the 'sixth generation' of Chinese filmmakers whose works challenge the strict Chinese system with a critical, uncompromising vision of urban life under pressure. Zhang Yuan has won numerous awards from Venice, Rotterdam, and Viennale.