Director Qiu Yang became the first Chinese filmmaker to win the Palme d'Or for best short film when the 70th Cannes Film Festival awards were announced on Sunday. (Photo/China.org.cn)
Director Qiu Yang became the first Chinese filmmaker to win the Palme d'Or for best short film when the 70th Cannes Film Festival awards were announced on Sunday.
The 28-year-old Changzhou-born director took the award for "A Gentle Night", a 15-minute film in Changzhou-dialect about a mother trying very hard to find her missing daughter against all odds, refusing to go gentle into this particular good night on the eve of Lunar New Year in a certain Chinese city.
Qiu Yang made the film in his hometown, Changzhou in Jiangsu Province, explaining he had been inspired by local news reports about children missing in Changzhou. He wanted to explore the stories behind the missing persons.
The young director studied film at the Victorian College of Arts in Melbourne, Australia. In 2015, Qiu's master's degree graduation film, "Under the Sun", competed in the Cannes Film Festival's section for student films, Cinefondation.
He also became the second Chinese filmmaker ever to won a Palme d'Or award at Cannes since Chen Kaige's "Farewell My Concubine" 24 years ago.
Qiu is preparing for his next project, a feature-length film.
Nine films were selected from 4,843 submissions to compete for the Short Film Palme d'Or this year. The lineup included eight works of fiction and one animated short, submitted from China, Finland, France, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Greece, Iran, Colombia and Sweden.
