The writer, director and cinematographer was born in Wenzhou, China in 1997. He studied cinematography at the Beijing Film Academy and directing in the Graduate Film Program of New York University. His short Will You Look at Me premiered in the Semaine de la Critique at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival where it won the Queer Palm. The film went on to win the Short Film Jury Award at the Sundance Film Festival in 2023. He has worked as a cinematographer on a number of feature films including Farewell, My Hometown which won the New Currents Award at the Busan International Film Festival in 2021.
What was your starting point for “Jing Guo”?
One autumn afternoon in 2022, I was on the train to Frankfurt, to visit Simu, a friend I hadn’t seen since my teenage years. I had never been to Germany or Frankfurt. The scenery outside the train window was totally fresh and unfamiliar, yet the feeling of arriving at a foreign land in search of someone from your past was way too familiar and dear to me.
I started writing the script on the train as I was arriving in Frankfurt and decided to cast Simu and myself. And fortunately, I had a small DVCam with me.
We spent an afternoon together, rehearsing, conversing, revisiting some blurred moments of lives in front of the camera, and the film, to us, is a souvenir.
Do you have a favorite moment in the film? Which one and why this one?
In that fleeting moment on the rooftop, the two characters gazed down at the city Frankfurt, their hair dancing in the wind against the backdrop of the dark blue sky. When the day met the night, Simu and Shuli were connected, in the same breath, as memories from their past blended with the present.
What do you like about the short form?
I like how much freedom it was given by the short form. The kind of freedom that allows you not to frame or direct the film, but lets you discover the film as it comes into its own shape, and you might find the film arrive somewhere new, somewhere closer not to your intention, but closer to you.
I also love that a short film could be simply about a certain emotion. The process of making it could be like an outburst of an emotional volcano. As we, the audience, watch the film, follow the traces, and look into the relics of what has cooled down, it erupts within our imagination and hits home.
******************************************************************************************************
PRESS REVIEWS
„Goodbye First Love is a great example of the bravery of the short team’s programming instinct. At first glance, it looks rather amateurish. This is a film shot without any artificial light, without any colouring, and with simple and natural acting – yet it is an achingly touching love story, all the more powerful for its bracing, unadorned simplicity. „
mention by Redmond Bacon for Directors Note
„The shadows in the old Frankfurt flat where the protagonists of Shuli Huang’s (Will You Look at Me) biographical relationship story meet again almost a decade after their last encounter in Beijing are not just those of fading light. There are shadows of melancholy, disappointment and the dull pain of an old wound that could never heal properly. Dealing with such an emotional scar is evidently also the intention of the director of this chamber drama-like short film.“
review in german by Lida bach for moviebreak
„A farewell that is never actually said, but seems to have been present for a long time: Shuli Huang creates an unadorned, melancholy contribution to this year’s Berlinale Shorts between fading memories of a time together and visually reinforced isolation.“
review by Paul Seidel for Riecks Filmkritiken
******************************************************************************************************
ETC.
„In Jing guo (Goodbye First Love), two men in a holiday apartment in Frankfurt remember a love that first began in distant Beijing“
interview with section head Anna Henckel-Donnersmarck for Berlinale Topics
reactions on letterboxd
Berlinale Shorts 