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.

Festivals & Awards

2024 77th Cannes Film Festival – Special Screenings – World Premiere

2024 61st Golden Horse Film Festival

Scriptwriter(s)

Lou Ye

Producer(s)

Yingli Ma, Philippe Bober

Executive Producer(s)

Alex C. Lo, Vladimir Zemtsov

Key Casts

Hao Qin, Xiaorui Mao, Xi Qi

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 cinemas by bringing this latest work of Lou Ye to audiences. 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