Breathing (2016)

A town in Henan province, central China, the present day. Chief detective Huo Yan (Haolun Fan) is leading the stakeout of a hotel as part of an investigation into a cross-border child-trafficking ring. Young policeman Yatong (Yunong Pang) goes in to check the room of suspect Guo Heng (Haoze Yin) and is wounded when Guo Heng shoots him and escapes. Some time later, the police find Guo Heng shot dead by a river. During a public holiday, textile-factory worker Wang Nan (Ke Jing) and her young daughter Liu Xiaoyu (Enxi Jiao) are having a day out at a temple fair with Wang Nan's work colleague Liang Xiaoxiao (Yunru Zhou). That same day, the child-traffickers steal two children from a nearby village. When Liu Xiaoyu runs off on her own at the fair, she also is snatched. After searching everywhere and alerting the police, Wang Nan goes to visit her onetime husband Liu Fei (Shuang Gao), a petty criminal from whom she separated, taking their daughter with her. He's not in; instead, Huo Yan and his sidekick Hai Yang (Bai Shang) arrive, having found out that Guo Heng was in business with Liu Fei and that Liu Xiaoyu has been abducted by the same gang of child traffickers. Huo Yan gives Wang Nan a lift back to her flat but, as soon as he's gone, she catches a taxi. Later, Wang Nan takes a room in the same hotel the police were staking out and asks Liang Xiaoxiao to come over, stay in the room and call a certain telephone number at exactly 22:00, saying "the shipment has arrived". Meanwhile, Wang Nan waits outside the hotel and follows a car to a scrapyard on the edge of town.