Jet Lag

Forum 2022

One journey begins in Graz, in April 2020, the director’s trip back to China in the midst of the lockdown: flight connections on a cracked phone screen, hazmat suits on the aeroplane, tape sealing the hotel room door. But it also intermingles with another, earlier journey from the start, the family trip from China to Myanmar to find out what happened to great-grandfather, who left in the 1940s and never came back; his daughter, the grandmother, is still moved by his absence, just as the director is moved by her in turn. The director films both trips and everything around them too, that is why it is so hard to keep things apart, always the same fascination for patterns and textures, the same grainy video in black and white, the same eye for unlikely beauty, the same unflinching gaze. The true meaning of family is so very elusive, for the director, for her grandmother, for her girlfriend and their social group too; as they converse in Mandarin and English, there is love and solidarity, but also pain. The girlfriend comments that there is no main character in the film, but how could there be? Mind in one place, body still in another, jet lag is the ultimate decentred state.

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by Zheng Lu Xinyuan
with Lin Yucang, Lin Wenqing, Lu Coco, Zoe, Zheng Lu Xinyuan Switzerland / Austria 2022 Mandarin, Burmese, English 111’ Colour & Black/White World premiere | Documentary form

With

Lin Yucang
Lin Wenqing
Lu Coco
Zoe
Zheng Lu Xinyuan

Crew

Director	Zheng Lu Xinyuan
Cinematography	Zheng Lu Xinyuan, Zoe
Editing	Zheng Lu Xinyuan, Xinzhu Liu
Music	Tseng Yun-Fang
Sound Design	Kun Lou, Clark Zhao
Producers	Ray Matin, Shanshan Li
Executive Producers	Ray Matin, Shanshan Li

World Sales

Rediance

http://www.rediancefilms.com http://www.rediancefilms.com

Berlinale Meets | Interview

Zheng Lu Xinyuan

Born in 1991 in China. She studied film production. Her feature film debut Ta fang jian li de yun won the Tiger Award at the Rotterdam International Film Festival in 2020. Jet Lag is her second feature-length film.

Filmography

2012 Dinner; 10 min. 2014 Women on Islands; 6 min. 2016 Running in a Sleeping River; 11 min. · 5’ Funeral in the Rain; 8 min. 2017 Niu in the Last Day of Fall; 24 min. · Smokers Die Slowly Together; 12 min. 2018 Feverish; 23 min. · Gong che shang de bai se hu die (A White Butterfly on a Bus); 17 min. 2020 Ta fang jian li de yun (The Cloud in Her Room); 101 min. 2021 Just Like Any Other Night; 24 min. 2022 Jet Lag; 111 min.

Bio- & filmography as of Berlinale 2022