THE CLOUD IN HER ROOM
plus Q&A with director Zheng Lu Xinyuan & Vanessa Gildea, Irish filmmaker and producer; Women in Film and Television Ireland
Director: Zheng Lu Xinyuan
101 minutes. Hong Kong, China. 2020. Languages: Chinese, English. Subtitled. B&W.
Winner, Tiger Award, International Film Festival Rotterdam 2020
Muzi (Jin Jing), 22, accompanies her little half-sister to school where she meets a local bar owner, the father of another student. The strange man reminds Muzi of an old friend, reawakening memories of a relationship which suddenly disappeared. When Muzi’s Beijing photographer boyfriend arrives for a visit, the two roam a city that to Muzi feels so familiar yet distant as she searches for a place where she belongs. Set during a wet winter in Xinyuan’s hometown Hangzhou, the film reveals a city deformed by transformation, reflecting the transient state of mind of Muzi, through moments, flashing memories… Zheng Lu Xinyuan’s strikingly poetic, experimental and intimate debut feature, shot in luminous b&w is like a fragmented diary, both personal and very contemporary.
‘ZHENG LU Xinyuan's brilliant and intimate film The Cloud in her Room is deeply moving...It is beautiful, honest and thought provoking. It mines the personal and deftly but subtly makes the personal, universal. It is visually luminous, a feast for the eyes and ears, and also emotionally arresting in its portrayal of memory and the tiny moments that contain within them the very mystery of life itself.’ (Vanessa Gildea, Irish filmmaker and producer; Women in Film and Television Ireland)
About Zheng Lu Xinyuan
Zheng Lu Xinyuan is a filmmaker based in Hangzhou, China. She graduated from School of Cinematic Arts, USC with a Film Production MFA in 2017. Her short films were selected to screen at festivals such as Tribeca Film Festival, FIRST International Film Festival, Bi- City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture and China Independent Film Festival. Xinyuan tries to cultivate a personal visual practice that explores the boundaries of various media. The Cloud in Her Room (2020) is her first feature and won the Tiger Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam.
Short films filmography
A White Butterfly on a Bus, 2018 (short)
Feverish, 2018 (short)
Smokers Die Slowly Together, 2017 (short)
Niu in the Last Day of Fall, 2017 (short doc)
Funeral in the Rain, 2016 (short)
Running in a Sleeping River, 2016 (short)
Women on Islands, 2014 (short)
Dinner, 2012 (short doc)
