Synopsis

In a dark, isolated home, a Chinese American teenage girl lives under the strict control of her mother, who treats punishment as care and obedience as survival. As the girl’s compulsive hair-pulling turns into a secret obsession, what begins as a private ritual of self-soothing curdles into something she can no longer hide. Each strand pulled is a small act of defiance — and a wound she keeps from the one person who claims to protect her. Confined within walls that blur the line between sanctuary and cage, mother and daughter circle one another in a slow, suffocating dance of love and dominance. The tension between them builds, quietly and inexorably, toward a violent confrontation — and a reckoning with what must be shed in order to survive.