Shu Qi arrived at the Singapore International Film Festival with a clear feeling that he had put an end to a long and mentally taxing cycle. Her directorial debut, Girl, opened the festival the night before, marking what she described as the “end point” of a two-year, much-discussed journey from Venice to Busan. Sitting with festival ambassador Rebecca Lim in Singapore, Shu was vulnerable, introspective and darkly funny about the pressure and exposure that comes with being behind the camera for the first time.
“I’ve been talking about Girl since 2023,” she said, jokingly adding that all she wants now is “to go home and sleep.” But the conversation quickly moved on. Shu openly admitted that he was considering continuing this themed arc. “I thought very hard about ‘Girl, Woman, Lady,'” she said. “This is what I plan on doing.” By her own calculations, one movie every 10 years will “carry me into my 80s.”
She also addressed a question that has dogged the film since Busan: the ending. Shu admitted that he is considering cutting the director’s version. In Busan, she was too emotional to answer questions about it. She revealed that it was not because she disagreed with the team, but because she was unexpectedly moved. Her original instinct, she explained, was to end the story when the father character had a motorcycle accident. “If I get a chance, I might cut the director’s version,” she said.
Shu followed the film’s long development over more than a decade. She recently rediscovered her 2013 first draft. “Every shot I saw was something I had already experienced many times in my mind,” she said. Her years of experience as an actress have given her strategies for when she feels overwhelmed. “I just played the role of the director.”
Her mentor, Hou Xiaoxian, was the inspiration. “If it wasn’t for director Hou, ‘Girl’ wouldn’t exist,” she said. He asked her on three separate occasions if she would consider directing, and persuaded her the third time. Mr. Hsu also provided a rare update on his health. Hou is currently retired due to illness and his family has asked him to distance himself and maintain privacy, but he is “very healthy and happy” in his daily life.
When discussing filming, Shu detailed how he constructed the world of late 1980s Taiwan for his actors. The young protagonist, Bai Xiaoying, gave up her cell phone for three months to understand what childhood was like back then. In the role of the mother played by 9m88, Shu recreated the textures of everyday home life, down to the way switches, cupboards, and kettles were handled. She recalled when she watched 9 Minutes 88 Seconds clean an entire house on screen in a long take. At that moment, she burst into unexpected tears behind the monitor. “At that time, I realized how difficult it is to be a housewife.”
Shu’s candor extends to the film’s most difficult parts, including childhood trauma, cycles of violence, and scars passed down through three generations: grandmother, mother, and daughter. It wasn’t until she completed the film that she realized that her mother “was once a girl,” too, and was able to understand her parents “a little more,” she said.
She also addressed how she deals with surveillance, saying the line that resonated the most: “I ignore them. Life is your own. You make your own choices.” She says she reads the comments but refuses to let them control her.
The humor carried through into the evening. Shu describes herself as a “positive person…maybe a little hyperactive,” and laughs at the relief of not dieting or wearing makeup as a director, and talks about her long history of self-improvement, including running away from home as a teenager, moving to Hong Kong on her own, and relearning Chinese in order to work in China. “If I think something needs to be done, I do it right away,” she said.
One of the most unexpected revelations of the night was when Shu was scouting the bridge for a movie. But then she realized that it was the same bridge she crossed in director Hou Hsiao-hsien’s “Millennium Mambo.” She was surprised by the symmetry. “It’s fate,” she said. “My relationship with Director Hou”
At the end of the session, Lim thanked everyone for their courage on screen. Shu said she hopes “Girl” will give those living with pain the strength to move forward, saying, “Even if life is hard right now, better days will slowly come.”
