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
Yunxue Yu, Kangmin Huang, Shuli Huang
China
2022
In Mandarin with English subtitles
Featured in:
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.
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Lessons of Darkness
Werner Herzog's unforgettable documentary reveals the unfolding disaster of the Kuwaitian oil fields in flames in 1991 as a sweeping inferno of mesmerizing power.
Beau Travail
Inspired by Herman Melville's Billy Budd, Claire Denis' transfixing Beau Travail is set in East Africa. Sgt Galoup (Denis Lavant) reflects on his time in the French Foreign Legion, and the impact of the handsome Sentain (Gregoire Colin).
The Sixth Sense
"I see dead people." Does 10-year-old Cole (Haley Joel Osment) have the sixth sense, as he claims — or is this sensitive, unusual child responding to stress, as his mother (Toni Collette) would like to believe? Psychologist Bruce Willis finds out.
The Blair Witch Project
The rushes of a student-made documentary investigating the legend of the Blair Witch in Burkittsville, Maryland, a quest that led the three filmmakers deep into the Appallachian woods. Easy to get lost in there...
Late Fame
Based on a novella by Arthur Schnitzler (Eyes Wide Shut) this is a sly, poignant comedy about vanity and art from director Kent Jones, starring Willem Dafoe as a mailman belatedly acclaimed for a book of poetry he wrote in his youth.
Credits
Producer
Shuli Huang
Screenwriter
Shuli Huang
Cinematography
Shuli Huang
Editor
Yang Yang, Shuli Huang
Original Music
Nicolas Verheaghe
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.