MTSU’s free Chinese Film Festival returns on Sunday nights beginning Oct. 23, bringing four films focusing on relationships of all kinds, courtesy of the College of Mass Communication and the Confucius Institute.

Each movie will begin promptly at 6 p.m. in Room 103 of the John Bragg Mass Communication Building. Following each movie, Liu Jue, a mass-comm master’s degree candidate, will again lead a question-and-answer session.

All movies in the series have English subtitles and are free and open to the public.

The Oct. 23 film, “Ocean Heaven,” focuses on a dying father’s struggle to find a home for his autistic adult son and the community that rises to support them.

A single mother’s struggle to raise her hearing-impaired child after a painful divorce is the subject of the Oct. 30 film, “Break the Silence.”

A post-Cultural Revolution family in Beijing struggles over 30 years with their relationships in the changing Chinese society in “Sunflower,” the Nov. 6 film at MTSU.

And on Nov. 13, “Still Life” depicts two people’s desperate search for their respective spouses before a town is destroyed to build a Yangtze River dam.

This is the festival’s 13th semester, according to organizer Dr. Bob Spires, professor of electronic media communication.

Founded in 2004, the Confucius Institute is a nonprofit organization established to strengthen educational cooperation between China and other countries. MTSU’s institute celebrated its grand opening in April 2010.

For more information, call Spires at 615-898-2217, the Confucius Institute at 615-494-8696 or Dr. Guanping Zheng at 615-904-8365.