Set between 1979 and 1989 in a remote western province of China, we follow the changing fortunes and attitudes of a group of friends, all of whom are performers in a state sponsored theatre company. This is the period when China made the commitment to world trade and the free market, a move that caused one of the nation's largest social and economic upheavals since becoming communist nearly 50 years earlier. Beautifully filmed and often wittily observed, Platform is a revelation in its study of a people coming to grips with the concept of the contemporary western interpretation of 'the individual'.