Chinese box-office king Feng Xiaogang’s latest is a thoroughly engrossing, coming-of-age melodrama.

It’s the mid-1970s and, while Mao’s Cultural Revolution may be on its last legs, the People’s Liberation Army dance troupe continues to recruit new performers and stage balletic odes to the communist way. Young dancer Xiaoping (Miao Miao) finds herself bullied by her peers because of her reactionary father’s banishment to a re-education camp. Fellow outcast in the troupe, Liu Feng, though kind and selfless, faces his own problems. But for both of them, the challenges of the dance troupe are nothing compared to the horrors of war, which they experience firsthand after leaving the troupe.

Feng’s historical drama traverses its story’s 20-year timespan with sweeping camerawork and the entertaining grace of a master dancer, painting an epic portrait of change that is equal parts heartbreak and nostalgia.