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Jet Lag

Still from the film "Jet Lag" by Zheng Lu Xinyuan. A black-and-white image of a girl hiding behind an open hotel room door, with the side of her body and her hair visible.
© Zheng Lu Xinyuan
  • Director

    Zheng Lu Xinyuan

  • Switzerland, Austria / 2022
    111 min. / Original version with English subtitles

  • Original language

    Mandarin, Burmese, English

One journey begins in Graz, in April 2020, the director’s trip back to China in the midst of the lockdown: flight connections on a cracked phone screen, hazmat suits on the aeroplane, tape sealing the hotel room door. But it also intermingles with another, earlier journey from the start, the family trip from China to Myanmar to find out what happened to great-grandfather, who left in the 1940s and never came back; his daughter, the grandmother, is still moved by his absence, just as the director is moved by her in turn. The director films both trips and everything around them too, that’s why it’s so hard to keep things apart, always the same fascination for patterns and textures, the same grainy video in black and white, the same eye for unlikely beauty, the same unflinching gaze. The true meaning of family is so very elusive, for the director, for her grandmother, for her girlfriend and their social group too; as they converse in Mandarin and English, there is love and solidarity, but also pain. The girlfriend comments that there’s no main character in the film, but how could there be? Mind in one place, body still in another, jet lag is the ultimate decentred state. (James Lattimer)

Zheng Lu Xinyuan, born in 1991 in China. She studied film production. Her feature film debut Ta fang jian li de yun won the Tiger Award at the Rotterdam International Film Festival in 2020. Jet Lag is her second feature-length film.

Production Ray Matin, Shanshan Li. Director Zheng Lu Xinyuan. Cinematography Zheng Lu Xinyuan, Zoe. Editing Zheng Lu Xinyuan, Xinzhu Liu. Music Tseng Yun-Fang. Sound design Kun Lou, Clark Zhao. Executive producers Ray Matin, Shanshan Li. With Lin Yucang, Lin Wenqing, Lu Coco, Zoe, Zheng Lu Xinyuan.

World sales Rediance

Films: 2012: Dinner (10 min.). 2014: Women on Islands (6 min.). 2016: Running in a Sleeping River (11 min.), 5’ Funeral in the Rain (8 min.). 2017: Niu in the Last Day of Fall (24 min.), Smokers Die Slowly Together (12 min.). 2018: Feverish (23 min.), Gong che shang de bai se hu die / A White Butterfly on a Bus (17 min.). 2020: Ta fang jian li de yun / The Cloud in Her Room (101 min.). 2021: Just Like Any Other Night (24 min.). 2022: Jet Lag.

Bonus Material

  • Still from the film "Jet Lag" by Zheng Lu Xinyuan. Black-and-white image of a glowing white light surrounded by grass and twigs.

    Essay

    In “Sudden, Fleeting Things” Skye Arundhati Thomas writes on Zheng Lu Xinyuan’s JET LAG and the way it “confronts and chews up” the past.

  • Still from the film "Jet Lag" by Zheng Lu Xinyuan. A black-and-white image of two legs standing against a grey background, photographed looking down.

    Director's Statement

    Zheng Lu Xinyuan on the origins of JET LAG.

  • A hazy image of a traditional Chinese building set against green mountains.

    Recollection

    Wedding text with image, Xinyuan Zheng Lu’s “Scattered Shadows” traces the influence of her grandmother on JET LAG.

Forum Program 2022

Funded by:

  • Logo Minister of State for Culture and the Media
  • Logo des Programms NeuStart Kultur