Outside the Room of My Own, Chinese director Yang Shiyu’s debut feature starring Lucy Cheung, is being screened as part of the SIFF project during the Shanghai International Film Festival.
The film depicts Yuan Chengge, a writer tired of living in Beijing, who travels to Chengdu and then heads to Luding Village with his mother and grandmother. This journey brings together three generations of women across the contrasting urban landscapes of Beijing as a megacity, Chengdu as a metropolitan center, and Luding as a small town, against a backdrop of social and economic uncertainty.
Inspired by Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, the film reimagines the story of the “independent woman” in modern China. “The central question of this film is not how women can become ‘independent’ but how they can reshape their subjectivity through their relationships with others,” Yang says. She added that the film attempts to approach the diversity and complexity of Chinese women’s life experiences “in a non-binary way” by juxtaposing the life experiences of daughters, mothers, and grandmothers.
Mr. Yang, who was born in Chengdu, graduated from Denison University in the United States, and trained at Beijing Film Academy, traces the origins of this project to a period of personal reflection. “‘Outside the Room of My Own’ is filled with my confusion and reflections on gender, generation, and individual existence in modern Chinese society,” she says. “This was my first step in trying to create my own aesthetic system as a filmmaker, and it is also the first step I cherish most.”
The script is rooted in Yang’s time living and working in Beijing. “The script is filled with details of city life that I know well: rent, neighborhood relationships, street noise, and other very mundane and tangible elements,” she says. The two main characters, Yuan Chenge and her boyfriend Wang Kong, have contrasting family backgrounds, and Yang says their class differences are “fully revealed through the everyday realities of living together.” She points out that such subject matter is “rarely seen in Chinese films.”
Zhang, who broke out in Jacques Audiard’s “The 13th Arrondissement” and was nominated for the 2022 Cesar Award for Most Promising Actress, was cast in the film after Yang saw her in the short “Nervous Energy,” which screened at Cannes Directors’ Fortnight. “I was really struck by the sharp, combative young woman she brought to the screen,” Yang says. “That was exactly the quality I was looking for in the female lead in my film.” A connection was established over a subsequent video call. “It was a real surprise for both of us,” says Yang. “Then she spent a few days reading the script and immediately agreed to take on the role. It was actually very natural and we connected right away.” Zhang’s feature Le Roi Soleil was screened at last year’s Cannes midnight screening.
Veteran actor Yue Hong, who won the 6th China Golden Rooster Award for Best Actress for “A Mountain” and the 27th Best Supporting Actress Award for “A Tale of Two Donkeys,” will play Yuan’s mother. Wang Zaiping, who has garnered attention for director Zhang Lu’s “Mother Tongue,” which was screened at the 38th Tokyo International Film Festival, will play the role of the grandmother.
The creative team includes editor Gong Jinglei, whose credits include Jia Zhangke’s Golden Lion Award-winning Still Life and Diao Chan Yinan’s Wild Geese Lake, and cinematographer Tao Qiu, whose short film All the Crows in the World won the Palme d’Or at the 2021 Cannes Short Film Festival. Producers are Peng Jing and Li Yifan. Xu Xiao will serve as co-producer.
Producer Peng Jing said that his first impression of the script was “a sensitive and certain line of sight, one that confronts broken subjectivity head-on,” and that Yang’s voice was “particularly distinctive” among young filmmakers. The project is currently in its rough stages and is seeking international distribution partners and collaborators for sound and music design, as well as support for outdoor filming planned for the summer. Sound design, original score, and color grading have not yet begun.
“Even in times of great uncertainty, this film believes that if you push through the thick clouds, there may be sunshine ahead,” Penn said. “We believe that this flow of emotions can flow between filmmakers and audiences not only in China but also abroad.”
For Yan, this project represents something more personal than a festival’s business card. “Holding each other through personal pain and limitations is also at the heart of this film,” she says. “This is the most honest and courageous expression I can offer at this time.”
