Synopsis

January 2020. A film crew reunites near Wuhan to resume the shooting of a film halted ten years earlier, only to share the unexpected challenges as cities are placed under lockdown.

Curators’ note

An Unfinished Film, premiering at a Special Screening of the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, represents Lou Ye’s own way of documenting the COVID-19 pandemic. At the present, when five years has passed since the pandemic broke out, when relevant memories may have faded away, our team wish to encourage a “memory exchange” of the pandemic in the UK by bringing this latest work of Lou Ye to the audience here. Through specially curated screenings, we expect the binding of memories. Although the film is based on Lou Ye’s experiences in China, we believe that it resonates with memories of people with different nationalities and from different walks of life, no matter when or where the memories were collected. The resonance may relate to pains, sufferings, and anxieties, or to warmth, healing, and fun. Bearing the “differences” and “commonalities” of the memories, the viewing experience of the film will become a journey of sorting and reviewing personal memories of the pandemic, a journey where memories of the director, the curator, and the audience collide, exchange, and fuse(Yixiang Lin and Wenqi Zhang).

Director‘s statement

Festival & Awards

2024

77th Cannes Film Festival Special Screenings

Casts

Hao Qin, Xuan Huang, Xi Qi

Credits

Scriptwriter: Ye Lou, Yingli Ma

Cinematography: Jian Zeng

Sound: Kang Fu

Production design: Cheng Zhong

Editor: Jiaming Tian