“Outside the Room of My Own,” a debut feature from Chinese filmmaker Yan Siyu starring Lucie Zhang, is showing a work-in-progress cut at SIFF Project during the Shanghai International Film Festival.
The film follows Yuan Chengge, a writer burned out by life in Beijing, as she travels to Chengdu and then onward to the village of Luding with her mother and grandmother. The journey draws three generations of women together across contrasting urban landscapes – Beijing as megacity, Chengdu as major urban center, Luding as small town – against a backdrop of social and economic uncertainty.
Inspired by Virginia Woolf‘s “A Room of One’s Own,” the film revisits the “independent woman” narrative in contemporary China. “The central question of this film is not how a woman can become ‘independent,’ but how I can reshape my subjectivity through my relationships with others,” Yan says. She adds that the film tries to approach the multiplicity and complexity of Chinese women’s lived experience “in a non-binary way,” placing the life experiences of daughter, mother, and grandmother side by side.
Yan, who was born in Chengdu and trained at Beijing Film Academy after an undergraduate stint at Denison University in the U.S., traces the project’s origins to a period of personal reckoning. “‘Outside the Room of My Own’ is filled with my confusion and reflections on gender, generations, and individual existence in contemporary Chinese society,” she says. “It is also the first step I have taken as a filmmaker in trying to build an aesthetic system of my own – and it is the first step I cherish the most.”
The script is rooted in Yan’s years living and working in Beijing. “The script is filled with details of urban life that I know very well – rents, neighborhood relationships, city noises, and other very everyday, concrete elements,” she says. The two lead characters, Yuan Chengge and her boyfriend Wang Cong, come from contrasting family backgrounds, and Yan says their class differences are “fully revealed through the everyday reality of living together.” She notes that such material is “rarely seen in Chinese cinema.”
Zhang, who broke out in Jacques Audiard’s “Paris, 13th District” and earned a César nomination for Most Promising Actress in 2022, came aboard after Yan saw her in “Nervous Energy,” a short that screened at Cannes Directors’ Fortnight. “I was really struck by the kind of sharp, combative young woman she brought to the screen,” Yan says. “That was exactly the quality I hoped the female lead in my film would have.” A subsequent video call sealed the connection. “It was a real surprise to both of us,” Yan says. “After that she spent a few days reading the script, and very quickly agreed to take the role. So in fact, it was a very natural and immediate connection.” Zhang’s feature “Le Roi Soleil” screened in Cannes Midnight Screenings last year.
Veteran actor Yue Hong, winner of Best Actress at the 6th China Golden Rooster Awards for “In the Wild Mountains” and Best Supporting Actress at the 27th edition of the same awards for “A Tale of Two Donkeys,” plays Yuan’s mother. Wang Caiping, whose recent credits include Zhang Lu’s “Mothertongue,” which competed at the 38th Tokyo International Film Festival, appears as the grandmother.
The creative team includes editor Kong Jinglei, whose credits span Jia Zhangke’s Golden Lion winner “Still Life” and Diao Yinan’s “The Wild Goose Lake,” and cinematographer Tao Qiu, whose short “All the Crows in the World” took the Short Film Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2021. Producers are Peng Jin and Li Yifan; Xu Xiao serves as co-producer.
Producer Peng Jin says her first impression of the script was of “a delicate, assured gaze – one that confronted a fractured sense of subjectivity head-on,” and that among young filmmakers, Yan’s voice stood out as “particularly distinctive.” Now in rough cut, the project is seeking international distribution partners and collaborators for sound and music design, as well as support for a planned summer exterior shoot; sound design, original score, and color grading have not yet begun.
“Even in a time of extreme uncertainty, the film still believes that once we run beyond the heavy clouds, clear skies may be waiting,” Peng says. “I believe this emotional current can flow between the filmmaker and audiences in China as well as internationally.”
For Yan, the project represents something more personal than a festival calling card. “To move beyond individual pain and limitation, and to embrace one another, is also at the heart of this film,” she says. “This is the most sincere and courageous expression I am able to offer at this stage.”
