Living together in a claustrophobic home in a rundown part of Tianjin, China, stepsisters Tao Lan (Lin Liu) and Yu Xiaoquin (Yun Li) are forced to share everything, yet they couldn't have less in common. Tao Lan is a free spirit who is proud of her working-class roots, while studious Yu Xiaoquin is attractive and sophisticated; their antagonism is heightened by favoritism from their parents. When Yu Xiaoquin frames Tao Lan for something she didn't do, a fight between the girls has tragic results, and Tao Lan is forced to pay the price. Released from prison 17 years later to spend the New Year with her family, the now-grown Tao Lan finds herself unable to cope with a much-changed outside world. She befriends a female prison guard when her family fails to pick her up, and the two embark upon a journey to reunite the prisoner with her estranged parents. Directed by the acclaimed sixth-generation Chinese auteur Zhang Yuan (EAST PALACE, WEST PALACE), SEVENTEEN YEARS is both a scathing indictment of the political and penal system in China, and a moving depiction of a poor family fraught by tragedy, circumstance, and violence.