The Chinese director was born in 1992 and earned her MFA degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2019. After completing her studies, she returned to China and founded the Trembling Flame Films production company with her partner Yue Huang. In 2021, she produced Yue’s short film The Executioner, which premiered at Clermont-Ferrand. Her documentary debut A Long Journey Home premiered at Visions du Réel in 2022 where it won the Jury Prize in the Burning Lights competition. The film went on to be invited to several other festivals, including MoMA’s Doc Fortnight in 2023.
What was your starting point for „Re tian wu hou“?
Before creating my short film „RE TIAN WU HOU,“ I made a documentary about my family. This film focused on the present time and space, which allowed me to closely and seriously look into our living situation. I thought I was fortunate to have had an excellent excuse to confront our past and future with bravery and honesty. It is also during this time that my grandmother shared with me a specific period from her past when she took care of the family in the 1990s. As my father was working in a faraway place in the Shenzhen special economic zone and my mother could not take care of me alone, I grew up living with many family members. What she told me about a specific noon when families would come home to have lunch together and then take a nap, filled with unstable and blurry emotions, stirred some of my own memories. This inspired me to develop the idea into a film with my partner, Yue Huang.
Do you have a favorite moment in the film? Which one and why this one?
I prefer to seek such moments when set-up scenes and actors can lead me into the experience of real during filming, and I have experienced some of them. Although I cannot pinpoint a specific one, I would like to share a scene where a young couple was staying in their room with their crying baby girl. The actors portrayed a stylistic and contradictory energy of indifference and anxiety.
What do you like about the short form?
The short form is a good way to experiment with raw ideas and to pick up the fragments in your mind. It’s like trying to combine or mix a few words together to create a meaning more freely, a meaning of human emotion.
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INTERVIEWS
„The images and sounds we have in our memory are always incomplete and blurry, and it is this feeling that guided me to design the short film. Everything is linked to a space or sign that defines it, like a child sitting with his toys on a dark tiled floor, different styles of shoes on shelves, a body with bruises, fish tanks, cupboards full of objects, an exquisite piece made for weddings, etc. The same goes for the elusive relationships between people who share the same space at home… All this comes from memory itself, from the reconstruction of family memories, photos from the past, and also from some historical facts.“
Interview by Nicolas Bardot for LePolyester
Interview by Knut Elstermann for radioeins
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JURY STATEMENT for Silver Bear Jury Prize
„Depicting the world, especially the one we live in, is no longer a question of general views. Just as the map can’t represent the world, and when it does, we know the tragic consequences of that attempt. Cinema must aspire to show what does not fit on the map. All that exceeds the frame. Sometimes, listening, just for a while, is enough to understand that the world is made up of infinite overlapping layers, hundreds of simultaneous details, hidden sensibilities and subtle emotions. For its elegance and delicacy, and the extreme care shown to invite us to observe and listen to a small portion of the world, this jury has decided to award with the Silver Bear Jury Prize the film Re tian wu hou by Wenqian Zhang.“
The Awards and Jury of Berlinale Shorts
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PRESS REVIEWS
„A wonderfully observed sketch of a family lunch in late-1990s China that not only captures period mood but is compiled from glimpses of myriad miniature dramas. (…) It is not a film concerned with grand narrative and yet in the accumulation of its quiet observations, it positively brims with mood, character, and sense of a very particular moment in modern Chinese history. Set during a single lunchtime on a humid afternoon in the 1990s, it was conceived of by Jiang as a way to explore the very tangible memories she has of being a young girl at this time. The film perfectly evokes the feeling of a memory – like a mosaic of atmosphere and glimpsed detail.“
review by Ben Nicholson for The Film Verdict
„Mit intuitivem Blick für die unterliegende Dynamik, die sich in äußerlich trivialer Interaktion verrät, skizziert Wenqian Zhang die unsichtbaren Risse hinter der funktionalen Fassade einer Familie, die ihre eigenen sein könnte. Durch Kinderaugen entschlüsseln statische Aufnahmen die unbewusste Körpersprache innerer Gereiztheit. Trotz geöffneter Fenster evozieren die durch das Interieur eingefassten Bilder das Gefühl einer nicht nur räumliche Enge, deren destruktive Nachwirkungen der ferne Donner drohend ankündigt. „
review by Lida Bach for moviebreak
„Without really following a common thread, Remains of the Hot Day tells us a family story with its different characters, observed from near or far by the little girl. Details: a mirror in which the father’s damaged body is reflected, probably beaten by the people he fired. At the back of the courtyard, the mother talks about mysterious things with a stranger. Both are shown as observers neither invited nor important. And then the grandmother inside, a warm and consoling figure in the home.“
review in French by Amel Argoud for formatcourt
„Re tian wo hou is an almost abstract film. One learns hardly anything about this family and the individual stories of all its members. But we get an idea about a whole human life and that this life not only consists of big happy or sad events but mostly non-events and always recurring every day rituals. „
review by Rüdiger Tomczak for shomingekiblog
„The director explores the inner life of the family in a straightforward manner, paying attention to everyday situations, hanging up laundry, looking in the mirror, concentrating while studying. On the one hand, space and time seem cut off from the rest of the world, but also significantly influenced by the upheavals of a globalized world.“
review by Paul Seidel for Riecks Filmkritiken
„Die Hitze eines Tages spielt auch eine Rolle beim Gewinner des Silbernen Bären, „Remains of the Hot Day“ von Wenqian Zhang. Die Regisseurin erzählt dabei von eigenen Erinnerungen, familiären Strukturen und dem Gefühl eines Sommertages.“
mention by Doreen Kaltenecker for Testkammer
„Wenqian Zhang’s 24-minute film certainly expresses a nostalgia about childhood but also a yearning to understand the times one grew up in. In the film’s press notes she declares that looking back “on the turn of the century I recall a sense of hearing and unease that silently permeated the members of my family.” It was the period after the end of the Soviet Union, when the Chinese leadership pushed forward the introduction of capitalist methods of exploitation.“
mention by Isabel Roy and Verena Nees for World Socialist Web Site
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ETC.
„Re tian wu hou captures the feeling of life in an extended family, this time in the China of the late 1990s. For these latter two films, the filmmakers’ own families served as inspiration.“
interview with section head Anna Henckel-Donnersmarck for Berlinale Topics
reactions on letterboxd
Berlinale Shorts 