Our screening on Friday 23 May will be introduced by MINT Film Festival co-director Dr. Carol Rennie. The screening on 27 May will be introduced by MINT co-curator Wenqi Zhang.
Chinese writer-director Lou Ye (Summer Palace, Suzhou River) recalls the COVID lockdown via a hybrid of documentary, web videos, and fragments from his past films, spinning a powerful docufiction out of a nation’s collective trauma.
In 2019, filmmaker Mao Xiaorui and his team discover fascinating old footage from a project abandoned 10 years earlier. This unfinished work (reminiscent of Lou’s acclaimed Spring Fever) brings back nostalgic images of the past. Hoping to realise a project dear to him, Xiaorui reunites his original crew to complete it. But their efforts are disrupted by the onset of COVID-19 in Wuhan, forcing the group into lockdown.
The Garden Cinema View:
Lou Ye’s latest is slippery, ever shapeshifting, meta-docufiction that refracts a variety of early pandemic experiences. Initially an entirely believable depiction of a filmmaker’s attempt to recover and restart his lost film (mirroring Lou’s own motives almost exactly), before morphing into a kind of post-apocalyptic thriller as Wuhan locks down at frightening speed. Ultimately An Unfinished Film weaves in real-life media to present a very moving return to some emotional high and low points of that time. Whilst destined to never finish his intended film, Lou demonstrate how art can be so effective as an emotional memory container and generator for shared moments of trauma.
Mint in Cinemas: The UK Release of An Unfinished Film by Lou Ye is a women-led Chinese cinema release project, presented by MINT Chinese Film Festival (MINT CFF) with the support of the BFI, awarding funds from the National Lottery.
Follow MINT CFF on:
Instagram: @mintchinesefilmfestival
Xiaohongshu: @薄荷紫华语电影节
For more info, please visit their website: