Hangzhou New Cinema, Chinese New Wave at Beijing Film Festival

Ready to catch the “Hangzhou New Wave” at the Beijing International Film Festival? If the term alone leaves you puzzled, the 15th edition of the fest, running April 18-26, has the perfect introduction for you. After all, it is presenting works by writer and director Zhu Xin in a “Filmmaker in Focus” program that describes him as “the young flag-bearer of the ‘Hangzhou New Wave’,” or Hangzhou New Cinema.

Plus, Beijing 2025 will feature more up-and-coming Chinese filmmaker voices in its “Chinese New Wave” program, which organizers tout as “an important platform for discovering and promoting young filmmakers.” This year’s lineup, they promise, showcases “the best works of various young Chinese filmmakers, sharing their cutting-edge perspectives and diverse expressions.”

Check out the lineup for the “Chinese New Wave” program below.

But what about Zhu Zin? Let’s start with some basics. Hangzhou is the capital of the Zhejiang province in Southeastern China and is located closer to Shanghai than Beijing. Known for its history of poetry and other arts, as well as its UNESCO-endorsed cultural attractions, the picturesque city is today also home to universities and top high-tech companies. It is believed to have been the world’s largest city during parts of the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries.

In 2020, Britain’s National Film and Television School (NFTS) curated an online film season celebrating Hangzhou and “its batch of new, exciting filmmaking talent,” noting: “These auteurs, who are either originally from or studied in Hangzhou, all share an innate understanding of the city’s topography, local culture, and unique character. Their films are informed by their personal experiences and speak to an emerging emphasis on geographical perspective prevalent in modern Chinese cinema.”

And the NFTS highlighted that Hangzhou’s “combined qualities of natural beauty and modernity converge to form a city which has fostered the development of new directors who have created, with modest budgets, strikingly fresh films ranging from documentaries to fiction narratives, from confessional video diaries to experimental flashes of ingenuity.”

Or, as the Beijing film festival noted: “In the current landscape of Chinese film creation, youth films are undoubtedly an extremely important part,” and they have given rise to the term “Hangzhou New Wave.”

Zhu Xin, born in 1996, is one of the youngest creators in that city, according to the fest. He has expressed his love for the work of Thai auteur Apichatpong Weerasethakul. And he has quickly made a name for himself on the arthouse festival circuit.

In 2018, as a 22-year-old, the graduate of the film and television Department of the China Academy of Art released his first feature film, Vanishing Days, which screened in the New Currents section of the Busan International Film Festival and in the Berlin Film Festival’s Forum program. With a non-professional cast, Vanishing Days was made on a budget of just $2,500.

THR‘s review of the movie about a teenager’s surreal experiences during one summer noted that it has “wrapped his bustling hometown in a surreal, trance-like aesthetic,” adding: “Zhu transforms his city’s forests, caverns and islets into a stage on which characters weave in and out of their lethargic lives, shifting selves and delirious dreams.” The review concluded that the film “marks the emergence of an artist with an audacious vision.”

The filmmaker’s second feature was the experimental documentary A Song River. “To find the hometown in his memories, Zhu Xin tries to restore a Song Dynasty poem from a millennia ago,” reads a synopsis of the film. “This sets off a journey across time and space.”

Zhu’s latest feature, All Quiet at Sunrise, explores time, love, language, and memory. “The film originated from a whimsical thought I had,” the creative notes in his director statement on the movie. “As a fledgling filmmaker, still struggling with the domestic film industry, I wonder: how regretful I would be as an old man in my 60s if I hadn’t made the film I wanted to make?”

The Beijing festival’s “Filmmaker in Focus” program will screen his three features and five shorts from Zhu, namely Community, A Folk Song, On That Afternoon, Cleo, and Fragile Women.

The fest organizers have expressed one goal for the filmmaker focus on Zhu: “allowing everyone to get to know this ‘future star’ of Chinese cinema from all angles.”

Below is the lineup for the “Chinese New Wave” program at Beijing 2025.

Inner Secrets (Run)
Village Music (Lina Wang)
Stars and the Moon (Yongkang Tang)
Reflections in the Lake (Zhai Yixiang)
Wen Rou (Li Jiaxi)
Hidden Landscapes (Xufeng Guo)