Synopsis
This is a story of a Chinese student studying abroad in the United States who cannot attend her mother’s wedding in China due to the pandemic, struggling to record a video to send her blessings.
Liu Ziyao
Liu Ziyao is a Chinese writer/director/editor based in Los Angeles. Being an immigrant from China, she creates narratives from her personal experience that reflect the paradox of human's existence in a humorous way, in order to generate the audience's empathy and appreciation of our shared human condition. She is currently reading an MFA in Directing at UCLA and she received her BA in film from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she developed her unwavering attitude towards storytelling and relentless work ethic.
Director's statement
The film is based on my real-life experience recording a wedding blessing video for my mother. By re-editing the footage of the blessing video, I tried to recreate the self-struggles I was going through during the recording. My mother’s remarriage and the need to express myself forced me to face the fact that I had been escaping for so long—my father was dead, and he was really gone. The pandemic and academic burden, as well as the intense and short recording time, made the process even more emotionally difficult for me.
