The Story of This Life
A Chinese father flies over to Los Angeles to collect his son's remnants. Not knowing how to speak English, he hires a Chinese college girl as his translator.
Interview with Producer Xinyu "Ciao" Zhao
Congratulations! Why did you make your film?
During the height of the pandemic, there was a job post circulating around social media: a Chinese father who just lost his son due to COVID-19 in London was looking for a Mandarin speaker that can pick him up at Heathrow airport. I remember talking to my writer-director (who was also my roommate at the time) about the post one night, both of us trying to comprehend the immense loss hidden behind those simple words and eventually falling into silence. That post, along with many other tragedies we’ve witnessed at the early stage of the pandemic, became the blueprint of our story. When my writer-director approached me with an early draft, both of us knew that this is a story we had to tell.
Imagine I’m a member of the audience. Why should I watch this film?
From the outset, this is a beautiful film, and at its core, it is a very simple yet powerful story. It is about a family as well as two strangers, the dead as well as the living, and the most personal experience as well as the most universal feeling… The Chinese title of this film is Yi Cheng, which directly translates as A Ride. Just as our two protagonists share this part of their life journeys together, we wanted to invite the audience to join this ride.
How do personal and universal themes work in your film?
I’ve worked with the writer-director multiple times. Grief has always been a constant thread in her stories, and this time it’s finally come to the surface. The story is obviously very personal and close to home, as part of Janice’s personality is drawn from ours and the backdrop of the story is also representative of our backgrounds as study-abroad students. However, the feeling that the film is trying to convey is universal in the sense that coping with the death of a family member is an experience that almost every one of us will go through at some point in our life. This is a story about family, but it’s also about the encounter between two complete strangers. It sets forth a story that can potentially happen to anyone, and it’s not hard to imagine yourself in Chang Dong’s or Janice’s position. The themes of grief and loss have the capacity to transcend any individual experience, and they can start a conversation regardless of the viewers’ backgrounds.
How have the script and film evolved over the course of their development?
We ended up having 12 drafts before going into filming, so a lot had changed through the pre-production phase. The overall structure had always stayed the same, and it was the conversations and actions in each scene that we were tweaking. Janice is this independent study-abroad student who’s very close to us as filmmakers, but we’ve always had a difficult time pinning down Chang Dong’s character because he has a backstory that’s so different from ours and he’s going through something that we simply cannot fathom. What’s he thinking? How will he react? Will he cry, or will he lighten up a cigarette in silence? My director and I had so many calls with our fathers putting them through these imaginary scenarios, and we would end up with very different scenes every time.
When we first started out, we were trying to make Janice and Chang Dong co-leads, as one bears witness to the grief of another. Yet we later realized there was simply not enough screen time to flesh out two character arcs with our current scale. While Janice is a very relatable character and can easily be perceived as the audience surrogate, we eventually agree that Chang Dong is the one whose emotional journey we should be tracking. This is why in the final product, Janice’s backstory is hidden between the lines, and we spend a lot more time sitting with Chang Dong alone.
What type of feedback have you received so far?
The script was selected as a semi-finalist at the HollyShorts Screenplay Competition, and we managed to secure partial funding from a bay-area-based film non-profit, so it’s been a very encouraging process from the start. The film is very subtle and reserved, as that’s how we perceived the inner world of an East Asian father. We’re very lucky that many people who have watched the film appreciate that aspect of the film and understood what we’re trying to deliver.
Has the feedback surprised or challenged your point of view?
The most amazing feedback we’ve gotten actually came from our crew members. Around 90% of the film is in Mandarin, but around half of our crew don’t speak the language. Many approached us after we wrapped, saying that they didn’t understand what exactly was happening in front of the camera but they somehow grasped the emotions that were flowing in the scenes. That means we’ve managed to convey the story through elements beyond the dialogues, from the production design to the acting to the lighting. It’s just a very sweet comment to hear.
What are you looking to achieve by having your film more visible on www.wearemovingstories.com?
The film is currently in its festival run, so we’d like to share some behind-the-scenes stories and provide more context with the cinephiles out there who might have stumbled upon our film somewhere. It is a beautiful journey to have been part of the production, and we hope the film can enjoy more traction and find its way to the public.
Who do you need to come on board (producers, sales agents, buyers, distributors, film festival directors, journalists) to amplify this film’s message?
We will eventually be looking for a home for the film, with the hope that it can live on some platform and be shared with the public, so we would also love to connect with any potential distributors or buyers out there.
What type of impact and/or reception would you like this film to have?
The film encapsulates an experience that was very specific to the international student community, as a lot of us at the time were trapped in a foreign country because of the travel ban and the schoolwork. Parents were calling their kids way more often than usual, and a lot of my friends have pondered the same question as myself: what if something happens to me? How will my parents handle the news? The pandemic pushed everyone to rethink what it means to be away from home and how connections are maintained or lost with this distance. With the film, we’re hoping to record the special time period and explore the theme of grief and loss under these circumstances.
What’s a key question that will help spark a debate or begin a conversation about this film?
Is there a way to cope with the death of a close one? That’s the ultimate question we kept asking ourselves throughout the screenwriting phase and through Chang Dong’s journey. After waking up in the car, Chang Dong comes to the understanding that he can never have closure or reconciliation with his son now. Death is the end of it, and you can’t pick up from where you left off anymore. The only way to move forward is to recognize what’s been lost and live on with it. It’s kind of a dark, bleak message but it does represent how we think of it.
There’s also a more hopeful side. Because you can’t make up for the lost time, you’d better cherish the relationship while you still can. At least in my imagination, Janice will eventually reconnect with her parents after her encounter with Chang Dong. One of my friends told me she felt the urge to immediately call her parents after watching the film, which I guess is a great moral of the story.
Would you like to add anything else?
I wanted to give a shout-out to the crew & cast that were involved in the production. LA hadn’t been particularly kind to us during those six days of shooting. It was raining the whole night for one exterior shoot, and we were met with extremely strong wind for the other. I was really appreciative of everyone that powered through under these tough circumstances, and we managed to have an extremely smooth shoot throughout.
What other projects are the key creatives developing or working on now?
The writer-director and I are long-time collaborators now, and we’re developing multiple short and feature scripts together. One story that we’ve been working on for a while is a period piece drama set in Hong Kong. It’s also a story about building connections, and ironically, it’s also a story about birth.
Interview: March 2023
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The Story of This Life
A Chinese father flies over to Los Angeles to collect his son's remnants. Not knowing how to speak English, he hires a Chinese college girl as his translator.
Length: 17:18
Director: Alex Jiang
Producer: Xinyu “Ciao” Zhao, Alex Jiang and Val Tan
Writer: Alex Jiang
About the writer, director and producer:
ALEX JIANG is a writer/director/producer from Shenzhen, China with a BFA degree in Film Production from USC School of Cinematic Arts. Alex’s films have been selected and won awards at domestic and international festivals such as Fine Cut Festival of Films, Independent Shorts Awards, Rhode Island International Film Festival, and Taiwan Queer International Film Festival. She is currently developing her feature script and is eager to tell stories that center around the topics of identity, gender, and culture.
CIAO is an LA-based Chinese producer with experience in narrative shorts, documentaries and commercials. Her documentary works have earned 1+ million views on Chinese video platforms, and her narrative shorts have been selected at festivals including Austin Micro Film Festival, Austin Comedy Film Festival, Indie Short Fest and Canada Shorts. Most of her works feature the AAPI experience and she’s collaborated with a majority of female and non-binary filmmakers.
VAL TAN is a filmmaker from Singapore with a degree in Film Production from USC School of Cinematic Arts. As a filmmaker, Val has films selected at LA Shorts, Hollyshorts, and Newport Beach Film Festival. She has recently been selected as a 2022 Minority Report Screenwriting Fellow. Ultimately, Val is passionate about telling stories from the heart, surrounding themes of culture and family.
Key cast: Andy Sun (Chang Dong), Junru Wang (Janice)
Looking for: journalists, distributors and film festival directors
Instagram: @ciao_xinyu
Hashtags used: #AAPI #Chinese #Grief #Family #Drama
Website: www.thestoryofthislife.com
Other: IMDb
Made in association with: 7PM Literary and Film Salon
Funders: 7PM Literary and Film Salon, Self-funded