ZHANG Miaoyan (1964, China) grew up during the Cultural Revolution, which is why he barely had a chance to see films. Studying Art at UC Berkeley enabled him to watch foreign movies nonstop. IFFR's Hubert Bals Fund supported the post-production of Zhang's second feature film&nbsp;Black Blood&nbsp;in 2011, which won IFFR&rsquo;s NETPAC Award and the Best Film award in Saint Petersburg. The fund also sponsored his film A Corner of Heaven&nbsp;in 2014, which won the Grand Prix at the Andrey Tarkovsky Zerkalo Festival. Silent Mist (2017) premiered in Busan. Next to being a director, Zhang is also an oil painter.

Zhang Miaoyan

When describing a film by Zhang Miaoyan, you can’t avoid using terms like ‘hypnotic tracking shots’. Lurking in all corners behind the beauty of a quiet, misty canal town in a Chinese delta, however, is a menacing reality: (male) sexual violence and corruption. A dreamy poem becomes a wordless indictment.

IFFR 2018

Voices

Silent Mist, 

Silent Mist

With elegant camera movements in apt black-and-white, cameraman/writer/director Zhang enchants the viewer: a gripping phantasmagoria of modern slavery, opium pushers and youth gangs in an apocalyptic China, where a poor kid from the countryside goes looking for his mother.

IFFR 2015

Corner of Heaven, A

Spectrum Premieres

A Corner of Heaven

Not everything is progress in China. Less and less rain means that the inhabitants of Inner Mongolia have to do everything to survive. For instance, sell their own blood. And in order to sell enough blood, you have to drink. A drama of fate shot in impressively expressive black-and-white.

IFFR 2025
30 Jan – 9 Feb 2025

Zhang Miaoyan

Filmography

Zhang Miaoyan at IFFR

Black Blood

A Corner of Heaven

Silent Mist