The filmmaker says a newspaper story inspired Crossing Over and asks, How does the warmth of love survive and thrive in the confines of a cold prison, and over three long decades of changes in China's government? Jin Chen answers us with a beautiful story that begins in the early 1900s and unfolds for decades. Love's beauty is expressed in small, quiet looks and gestures between two prisoners. Liu Lang is in prison for having crippled a man. Zhou Hong is a prisoner for having murdered her abusive husband. In this place, men and women are separated, silenced, beaten, and confined with restrictions tough enough to kill one's soul. But despite the trials they must endure, Lang and Hong are fated to rise like phoenixes out of these ashes and to entwine their souls in real love. Crossing Over is a picture of more than kinship between the two lovers; their love transcends and finds its eternity even when the deadening trials of prison life keep feet and mind earthbound. Festivals: Opening Film, 2007 Tokyo Film Festival.