An Unfinished Film

★★★★★ “An utterly unique and very important movie about Covid, the crisis that affected all of us.” – The Guardian

Director Xiaorui convinces his cast and crew to resume the shooting of a film halted ten years earlier. In January 2020, with the shoot almost complete, rumours regarding an illness begin to circulate. A hairdresser from Wuhan is sent home, while the crew follows the news on their phones. The director has to decide whether to halt the filming once again. Some of the crew and actors manage to leave before the hotel is locked down by security guards and everyone left on set is confined to their hotel rooms. As all communication is reduced to phone screens, Wuhan is locked down. The crew continues to communicate via video calls, whilst the quarantined main actor Jiang Cheng struggles to support his wife who is now locked-down with their month-old baby in Beijing.

An Unfinished Film, dir. Lou Ye, Singapore/Germany 2024, 106 mins., Mandarin with English subtitles

Mint in Cinemas: UK Release of An Unfinished Film by Lou Ye is a women-led Chinese cinema release project, presented by MINT Chinese Film Festival (MINT CFF) with the support of the BFI, awarding funds from the National Lottery. This film contains sequences of flashing lights which might affect customers who are susceptible to photosensitive epilepsy.