How the West may be helping to shape Chinese cinema’s next new wave: two emerging filmmakers tell their stories
Qiu Yang and Chloé Zhao – who are among the Chinese filmmakers showing their work at Cannes this year – stress how much living and studying abroad widened their horizons and gave them a new focus
Make way, China’s young, self-taught digital filmmakers: another cinematic wave is breaking on the country’s shores.
And unlike their digital-savvy predecessors, these Chinese-born directors studied, lived, worked and made their breakthroughs overseas; let’s call them the O-Generation. What better place for this nouvelle vague to emerge than Cannes, where a country’s cinema is constantly rediscovered and reinvented?
Just like other “new wave” films from China and elsewhere, the Cannes entries of Qiu Yang and Chloé Zhao appear very distinctive.
The former’s A Gentle Night (2017), which debuts in the official short-film competition, is a 15-minute piece about a woman’s desperate search for her missing daughter in a provincial Chinese city; Zhao’s The Rider (2017), part of the independently organised Director’s Fortnight programme, is a feature-length film about a young cowboy’s life on a Native American reservation in South Dakota, in the United States.
What connects the two are the backgrounds of their creators, both of whom are making their second appearances at Cannes this year.