In a remote village in China’s Liangshan Mountains, Qihuo and her two best friends are ordinary teenage girls: they gossip about their classmates, attend their classes, and dream about their futures. When Qihuo has her first period, the girls embark on an adventure to find a skirt for the traditional “Changing Skirt” ceremony marking a girl’s transition into womanhood. With their parents away as migrant laborers, they decide to walk over the mountains to the nearby city of Butuo in hopes of finding the right garment. The arduous trip, which shapes the film, becomes a poignant, dreamlike journey through the magic, mysteries, and trials of childhood, toward its inevitable end. Blending reality and fiction, Whispers in May is a beautiful coming-of-age story of friendship and a fearful longing for the adulthood that lies ahead. BD