Although the core event of the story centers around juvenile delinquency, Summer is the Coldest Season doesn’t focus on the crime itself. Instead, the film demonstrates how the 13 year-old Jiahe, a sensitive and introverted girl, deals with the consequences. It shows how she survives through the death of her mother, how she reacts to the fact that minors are not obligated to bear criminal responsibilities and how she reforms the relationship with her father and regains his trust in the end.

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Attentive to Jiahe’s psychological fluctuation, the first-timer director Zhou Sun carefully parses out puzzle after puzzle, leading the audience on the young heroine’s uneasy decision-making process when she meets Yu Lei, the boy who has a direct connection with the death of her mother.

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Summer is the Coldest Season is an eccentric coming-of-age story that provides a sympathetic depiction of a girl embroiled in uninviting entanglements, trying to garner bravery and learning to forgive.