Skip to main content
Will You Look at Me film image, director Shuli Huang

Will You Look at Me

Dang wo wang xiang ni de shi hou / 当我望向你的时候

North American Premiere

A 25-year-old gay man returns to his hometown in China after film school, and reflects how his coming out as gay affected (and continues to affect) his mother. Beautifully shot on 8mm and 16mm in a modernized Jonas Mekas-like personal diary style, Shuli Huang takes his time to craft mini-visual poems and a sense of place before addressing the heart of his work via voice over essayistic thoughts and revealing conversations with his mother. The tension between societal norms and individuals is obvious, but Huang also takes care to grant his parents personhood, documenting their little habits so that they become a subtext of the film as well. It’s a moving, brilliant film made by a man searching for hope and meaning in life, while wishing he and his mother could love each other as the other wishes.

 

Media Partner

Community Partner

Director
Cast

Yunxue Yu, Kangmin Huang, Shuli Huang

Credits
Country of Origin

China

Year

2022

Language

In Mandarin with English subtitles

Film Contact
20 min

Featured in:

Ponto Final film image, director Miguel López Beraza

International Shorts: Personal Journeys

The films in this shorts program are all about discovery. Beautiful and thought-provoking voyages of internal and external discovery that honour relations and history, while encountering stimuli that promote a new understanding of self.

 

MORE INFO

Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre

The Wedding Banquet

Dir. Andrew Ahn
103 min

This joyful comedy cleverly updates Ang Lee's 1993 gay marriage comedy and transports the action to contemporary Seattle (actually, Vancouver).

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Tornado

Dir. John Maclean
91 min

Scotland in the 1790s, travelling circus samurai Tornado (Kōki) runs afoul of a band of murderous brigands led by Tim Roth and his ambitious son, Jack Lowden. Mayhem ensues.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Two Women

Dir. Chloé Robichaud
100 min

In this light-hearted, emancipatory take on a classic sex farce, two neglected married women discover the joys of casual sex and get their plumbing fixed.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre
Nechako: It Will Be a Big River Again
Nechako: It Will Be a Big River Again film; overhead shot of churning water

Nechako: It Will Be a Big River Again

Dir. Lyana Patrick
91 min

In the face of environmental destruction, two Nations fight to restore their river and a way of life.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Fairy Creek

Dir. Jen Muranetz
86 min

Considered the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history, the Fairy Creek blockade led to more than 1200 arrests. What Jen Muranetz's film gives us is the story from the front line from the activists' point of view (often, from the treetops).

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Alfred Hitchcock's The Lodger

Dir. Alfred Hitchcock
98 min

When a stranger rents a room from model Daisy and her mum and dad, her policeman boyfriend becomes suspicious... Presented with an original live score by Chris Gestrin, the first signature Hitchcock movie is loosely based on the Jack The Ripper murders.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Credits

Producer

Shuli Huang

Screenwriter

Shuli Huang

Cinematography

Shuli Huang

Editor

Yang Yang, Shuli Huang

Original Music

Nicolas Verheaghe

Director

Shuli Huang headshot, Will You Look at Me director

Shuli Huang

Shuli Huang is a writer, director, and cinematographer born in Wenzhou, China. After graduating from Beijing Film Academy in 2019, he moved to New York City as an MFA candidate for NYU’s film program. Farewell, My Hometown (2021), his feature debut as a cinematographer, won the New Currents Award at the 26th Busan International Film Festival. His second short film, Will You Look At Me (2022), was selected for Cannes’ La Semaine de la Critique.