AS China’s premier art house gathering the Pingyao International Film Festival (PYIFF) drew to a close Oct. 19, The Hollywood Reporter sat down with a trio of promising young filmmakers whose work was widely discussed at this year’s event. Zhou Sun Zhou Sun started her creative life as a painter but found her focus was soon shifting from what was “outside” to what was “within.” “I started to become more interested in the human condition,” she says. “Life as a painter is often focused only on what is external, but I started reading more about psychology and thinking about my own feelings, and the more films I watched the more I realized that cinema is a way we can explore more fully what we feel.” After finishing art college back home in Jinggangshan, Jiangxi Province, Zhou was drawn to Beijing and went into the online gaming world, turning her artistic talent to character design. However Zhou kept thinking there might be something more to her creative life. Zhou ended up at the prestigious Beijing Film Academy and — after a one-year bridging course — the study of directing turned her world around. “So many famous and great filmmakers have been there, and the atmosphere among the students is so creative,” says the now 37-year-old. “It felt like I had found my home.” Zhou’s feature debut “Summer Is the Coldest Season” had its world premiere at PYIFF, screening as part of the Crouching Tigers program. The film picks up on the after effects of a murder and how a teenage girl is forced to make her own way in life. Veteran director Guan Hu — stalwart of China’s “Sixth Generation” of filmmakers and behind the box office hit “Mr. Six” — has been voicing his praises in Pingyao for Zhou’s “honesty and integrity.” The festival’s artistic director Marco Muller also shared his enthusiasm for the film. “This is a rather small film,” Zhou says. “It’s about how people deal with that feeling of being trapped in their life. The theme can be found in any genre in any country and I hope it is familiar to audiences everywhere.” Tang Yongkang Fate already seems to be on 35-year-old Tang Yongkang’s side, along with the important figure of auteur Jia Zhangke, the man behind the PIFF. The two were first connected through the simple fact that Tang named his first short “Tender is the Night.” “Jia had written a script before he had even made a film and it was called ‘Tender is the Night,’ so he thought this was karma,” says Tang. But by then Tang’s journey had taken him from the coastal city of Rizhao in eastern Shandong Province to detours through the study of art history and then painting. “But I was too restless in those two things. I found them boring,” he says. “I need to keep my mind working.” It was once Tang had begun studying photography at the Communication University of China that his path became clear. When working to help national broadcaster CCTV cover the soccer tournament at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, he saw how photography can be used to tell stories. “That’s when I decided I wanted to make movies,” he said. To get the money he needed to pay for further studies and a master’s degree in direction in Beijing and to support himself, Tang went to China’s northern Shanxi Province. He’d heard people were cashed up from the coal industry, and he also knew that it was the hometown of Jia, who was actively helping emerging filmmakers. “I set up a business teaching photography,” Tang says. “Then I did my studies and I started making short films and I put everything I had — every cent — into my graduation project in the hope Jia might notice it.” Its title made sure of that. Now Tang has seen his debut feature “Walking in Darkness” screen at his hero’s own film festival, under Pingyao’s Hidden Dragons section. It’s a quietly creepy tale of what a broken-hearted man needs to go through on the way to redemption. “So far I have found with my films that some people love them, some people hate them,” Tang says. “There is no middle way. But I love this. As long as I make the audience feel something, I am happy.” Sun Aoqian As a young man, Sun Aoqian was prepared to risk everything in order to watch movies, even it meant watching [pirated] films from all over the world in local Internet cafes in his hometown. “I knew I was underage and it was totally illegal.” Luckily for Sun, his passion for cinema was free to burn. Born into a family of farmers in Northeast China’s Yingkou, Sun has clear ideas about his future career. “Once I saw [Sergio Leone’s] ‘Once Upon a Time in America,’ I knew I wanted to make films,” Sun says. “I just watched every single film that I could, of every genre and from every country.” The now 27-year-old worked his way through a BA in drama, film and television direction at Beijing’s Communication University of China before his fist short — “Xiao Nan” — was picked up by the Shanghai International Film Festival in 2014. Sun’s first feature is the coming-of-age drama “Over the Sea,” which follows the journey of a young boy with big dreams of a better life. It was selected as part of the field for the Busan International Film Festival’s main New Currents award this year, before coming to Pingyao for its local premiere on the Best of the Fest card. Sun’s promise has caught the attention (and later, the financial backing) of Hong Kong impresario Bill Kong, CEO of Edko Films and producer of such Chinese-language classics as the Oscar-winning “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and “Hero.” “As a first-time filmmaker meeting the audience here in Pingyao and answering their questions has inspired me. It’s given me confidence but also shown me how much I have to learn.” (SD-Agencies) | 