This film is based on one of the short stories in Taiwanese author Wu Ming-yi’s short story collection The Land of Little Rain. Wu Ming-yi has earlier been known for his writing of nature. His novel The Man with Compound Eyes won the Grand Prize for Fiction at the Prix du Livre Insulaire in 2014. His novel The Stolen Bicycle has been shortlisted for the Booker International Prize in 2018, making him the first Taiwanese author nominated for the prize. He is one of the most important contemporary writers in Taiwan and has gained international fame. The narrative of The Clouds Are Two Thousand Meters Up is full of twists and turns, with stories within a story. The protagonist, Guan, is a retired lawyer whose wife was killed in an indiscriminate killing. He receives a cloud storage file from a hacker, which contains his wife’s unfinished novel about the endangered clouded leopard. He sets out on a journey into the mountains, filled with doubts and questions, and embarks on a fantastic journey searching for the leopard and becoming one, which helps him rediscover his wife and himself.
