Zhengfan Yang

Zhengfan YANG (1985, China) is a writer, director, producer, cinematographer and visual artist. He started making films at the age of 22, when he graduated from law school. After receiving basic training in filmmaking, he moved to Hong Kong for an MFA programme in film production. In 2010, he co-founded Burn The Film Production House with Shengze Zhu. He directed several shorts, before he made his feature film debut Distant (2013), which premiered at Festival del Film Locarno and screened at many film festivals internationally. Yang’s feature documentary Where are you going (2016) premiered at IFFR and received the Jury Award at China Independent Film Festival and the Best Experimental Film Award at South Taiwan Film Festival. His short film Down There (2018) premiered at the Venice Film Festival in the Orizzonti section. Yang’s creative documentary Footnote, a world premiere at IFFR 2022, is an audio-visual portrait of a neighbourhood in Chicago, exploring the tense atmosphere of the pandemic and the last year of the Trump administration through the use of police-radio footage.

Filmography

(selection) Tango in the Street (2007, short), The Man Behind a Camera (2009, short), Ten Years Later (2010, short), The Surroundings (2011, short), I Travel Through Time to Meet You Again (2011), Yuan Fang/Distant (2013, doc), Ni wang he chu qu/Where Are You Going (2016, doc), Liquid Image (2017, short), Down There (2018, short), Footnote (2022, doc)