Fragments and Textures: Memory and the City in Zheng Lu Xinyuan's 'The Cloud in Her Room'

Awarded the major prize at the 2020 International Film Festival Rotterdam, Zheng Lu Xinyuan's poetic film ambiguously melds dreams and reality to represent the emotional experience of a young woman's return to Hangzhou, a Chinese metropolis in a state of flux. Visually striking in its at times unconventional employment of black-and-white cinematography, the feature makes significant use of sound design to emphasise both physical intimacy and disconnection, Danica van de Velde writes.

Additional keywords:
Zhang Zhen, Urban Generation, experimental, Tseng Yun-Fang, Matthias Delvaux, black-and-white filmmaking, female directors, autobiographical filmmaking, dreams