Winners
About the director: Sasha CHUK Tsz-yin, founder of THE FLOW OF WORDS, is currently a director and writer. She published her collection of short stories THE EPILOGUE OF SUMMER in 2017.
Synopsis: Kwan believes that she is unique. Enclosed in solitude within her own literary world and deprived of affections from her family, she longs for love in whatever form it takes — no matter how distorted. She considers the detention class with Mr. Cheung a shelter from the world, until it is shattered together with all her hopes. She finally comes to the realization that it is the world that goes against her. There is no hiding place for her no matter how hard she struggles……
About the director: Tommy NG Kai Chung was born in 1991 in Hong Kong, China. He graduated from the School of Creative Media at City University of Hong Kong in 2013. After graduation he founded Paperbox Creations with two of his classmates and took up the role of director. In 2018, he established Point Five Creations. He is currently based in Hong Kong.
Synopsis: In a little forest in “Another World”, Little Ghost is looking for his designated spirit and Little Girl is in search of her younger brother. When Little Ghost who should have lost all traits of humanity encounters Little Girl who is reluctant to give up on finding her lost brother, love and care grow between them. From that moment on, their paths will be bound as Little Girl tries to right an unforgivable wrong.
About the director: Born in 1989, WANG Yuyan is currently working at Le Fresnoy – National Studio of Contemporary Arts. She graduated from China Academy of Art in 2012 and Beaux-Arts of Paris in 2016. She realizes multi-media projects which oscillate between performance, video, and installation, often from an immersive perspective.
Synopsis: Two hundred kilometers from Beijing, men live among rocks waiting to be broken, cut, sanded. The same gestures come back again and again to write a history of damage and repair. This story fades into the manufacture of monuments. With the wind that inexorably disseminates the traces of these actions.
About the director: ZHANG Xun (Eugene) is an independent photographer and documentary filmmaker. In 2015, he received a master’s degree in media cultures from City University of Hong Kong. From 2015 to 2018, he participated in the production of documentary HAVANA DIVAS and RED ROCK, as a cameraman and film editor. His short documentary, GRANNY AND MAMMY, was selected for the 1st Hong Kong International Documentary Festival. JUNE 30TH won the Halo Award at the 3rd Beijing International Short Film Festival.
Synopsis: My granny is old. She suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, hardly remembers anything, hardly walks, hardly speaks. She even spits everywhere while eating. Granny becomes a “child” and her daughter becomes her “mother”. She takes care of her, hoping that my granny will get better someday, just like a child will finally grow up. But people can only get older and older. Granny is too old. The only thing she can remember is the date of her grandson’s birthday, June 30th.
About the director: Born in 1993, JHAN Bo-Jyun earned an associate degree in electronic engineering from Hungkuo Delin University of Technology. He then graduated from National Formosa University a bachelor’s degree in multimedia design. He now studies animation at Tainan National University of the Arts’s Graduate Institute of Animation and Film Art.
Synopsis: The child went to father’s home village for the first time to attend grandma’s funeral with his family. However, his mother left the funeral after having arguments with father’s family. The father and the child stayed at the funeral alone to tackle the unfriendliness of father’s family and the death of grandma. At the end, the father and the child can only stay at the river bank when grandma was buried far, far away in the watermelon farm. That was the first time the child saw his father’s tears.
About the director: LEI Lei was born in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, in 1985. In 2009, he received a master’s degree in animation from Tsinghua University. In 2010, his film THIS IS LOVE was awarded the Best Narrative Short at Ottawa International Animation Festival. In 2013, his film RECYCLED won the Grand Prix non-narrative short at Holland Animation Film Festival. In 2014, he served on juries at Animafest Zagreb and Holland Animation Film Festival and received the Asian Cultural Council Cai Fellowship. In 2017, he started to work at CalArts’s Experimental Animation Program as a faculty member. In 2018, he was invited by the Academy to join its Short Films and Feature Animation Branch. In 2019, his first feature film BREATHLESS ANIMALS was selected for Berlinale Forum.
Synopsis: A woman is reminiscing about the story behind a photograph: it was a hot summer day in the 1980s. Her family travelled to Lushan to escape the heat. As her memory unfolds, we gradually come to see the forgotten history and that very photograph being damaged by a water stain.
Jury
Jury President | Ryan Krivoshey
Ryan Krivoshey is the Founder & President of Grasshopper Film, a distribution company dedicated to the release of acclaimed and award-winning independent cinema. Launched in 2015, the company features a library of over 250 titles, including Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary, Last Men in Aleppo, as well as films from Hong Sangsoo, Bi Gan, Bertrand Bonello, Claire Denis, Asghar Farhadi, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Matthew Barney, and Pedro Costa. Previously, Ryan led the Cinema Guild as its Director of Distribution for thirteen years. He is also co-founder/executive producer at Grasshopper Production Company.
Jury Member | LU Qingyi
The director Lu Qingyi was born in a multiethnic town. He lived on a mountain in the southern part of Guizhou. At 15 years old, he left his hometown due to teenage rebellion. After that, he did oily painting, became an athlete, and took up various kinds of occupations. And now he is an independent documentary producer.
His famous work, Four Springs (2017), was awarded Best Documentary of the 12th FIRST Film Festival, nominated as the Documentary of the Year of 13th Chinese Young Generation Film Forum, the Best Documentary and Best Film Editing of the 55th Golden Horse Film Festival and Awards.
Jury Member | Patrick Wang
Patrick Wang (王沛智) is a Taiwanese American director from Texas. He is the author of the books The Monologue Plays, Post Script, and Four Shooting Scripts. His first film In the Family was hailed “an indie masterpiece” by Roger Ebert. His second film, The Grief of Others, premiered to critical acclaim at SXSW and Cannes. His films A Bread Factory (Parts One and Two) were nominated for two Independent Spirit awards. He was named one of the “25 New Faces of Independent Film” by Filmmaker Magazine, and the New York Times remarked, “This is a career to keep an eye on.”
Jury Member | Simon Liu
Simon Liu is from Hong Kong and now lives in Brooklyn, USA. Liu’s films and 16mm projection performances have been presented at film festivals and institutions globally including the New York, Toronto, Rotterdam, London, Hong Kong and Edinburgh International Film Festivals in addition to the Sundance Film Festival, M+ Museum, Tai Kwun Contemporary, Parrish Art Museum, and “Dreamlands: Expanded” with the Whitney Museum of American Art & Microscope Gallery. Liu is a 2019 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow and a recipient of the NYSCA / Wave Farm Media Arts Assistance Fund in 2018. He is an Adjunct Instructor at the Cooper Union School of Art and a member Negativeland, an artist-run film lab in Brooklyn. Liu is currently in post-production on his first feature film, Staffordshire Hoard.
Jury Member | Jun Li
His short film My World was nominated for the Best Short Feature at the 55th Golden Horse Award, and Liu Yang He won the Best Film Award and Best Director Award at the 11th Freshwave Short Film Competition. His directorial feature debut, Tracey, premiered at the Tokyo International Film Festival and won the Best Supporting Actor at the 55th Golden Horse Award, and both Best Supporting Actor and Actress at the 38th Hong Kong Film Awards. Li himself was nominated for Best Screenplay and Best New Director. His second feature Drifting will be completed in 2020.
Jury Member | LIAO Xi
Liao Xi is a director, producer, screenwriter, and actor from Chengdu, Sichuan Province. He graduated from the Department of Chinese Language and Literature, Southwest China Normal University, and later dropped out of the MA program in International Political Economy, University of Birmingham. As a poet, Liao Xi is the primary initiator who gave name to Chinese “Third Generation Poetry.” As a director, his film Defenders (2017) was nominated in several film festivals such as Shanghai International Film Festival, Macau International Movie Festival, and so on. As a producer, he establishes long-term cooperation with directors like Zhang Ming and Sonthar Gyal. He helped produce and create many Mainland China and Hong Kong film projects, which won many important worldwide awards. The Pluto Moment (2018) was selected in Directors’ Fortnight of the 71st Cannes Film Festival. Ala Changso (2018) was awarded Jury Grand Prix and shortlist for Award for Best Feature Film of the 21st Shanghai International Film Festival. And Lhamo and Skalbe (2019) was on the shortlist of Official Selection of the 67th San Sebastian International Film Festival.
Jury Member | A Mei
A Mei is a Chinese screenwriter, novalist, and a former professional in media. She has published a novel collection The Endless Night of Beijing, and is the screenwriter of films including Knitting, Under the Hawthorn Tree, The Law of Attraction, A Wedding Invitation, Bitter Flowers, and So Long My Son.
Finalists
