In Stranger, director and producer Zhengfan Yang masterfully captures the profound sense of alienation and identity struggle experienced by modern Chinese people through the evocative metaphor of transient hotel stays.
Director and producer Zhengfan Yang bares his experience of being a stranger and an outsider in his own country in his film Stranger. Winner of the Proxima Grand Prix at the recently concluded 58th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF), this film explores identity and the feeling of loneliness among travelers living out of hotels. We were delighted to meet with Zhengfan Yang in Karlovy Vary, Czechia, during the festival.
“The idea of the project was conceived back in 2016. That was one year after I moved to the US. So, I think this experience of living between two countries intensified my feeling of being a stranger. Because in the US, I’m literally an outsider because of language and culture,” begins Yang, though he also felt like a stranger even in his home country, China. “The interesting thing is that every time I go back to China, because I go back to China every year on a regular basis, I feel like an outsider as well in my home country. Because of the rapid changes in that country, it makes it almost unrecognizable. So that experience is like, no matter where I go, I’m an outsider to my surroundings,” he said.
With these ideas and experiences, Yang was inspired to make a film set in different hotel rooms, as the experience of staying in a hotel room is very similar to his personal feeling. “It’s like when you’re in a hotel room, the only thing that you are sure about is that you are not at home and you are a stranger there,” he explained.
Yang thinks staying in hotels is like a metaphor and the tip of an iceberg that signifies his feelings of loneliness, isolation, and alienation, which initially were the premise of his hybrid documentary. But then, these different hotel rooms soon made way to tell a personal story, hence he decided to make up stories. “Although all the stories were adapted from reality, from a real event, I know that documentary won’t be able to fulfill my desire to tell stories about contemporary Chinese people,” he added.
The film was shot and made in a fictional way. So, all the mise-en-scène and camera movement had to be very precise, which was challenging for cinematographer Xin Hongke, who had to shoot every scene precisely as Yang wanted to convey the psychological state of the characters who lived in the small, congested hotel rooms.
“The film’s concept came about when everybody was stuck at home, either at home or in hotel rooms, because we started production at the end of 2022. That was right before the last peak of the pandemic in China. By the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023, almost everybody I know in China was infected, including all the crew members. So, I think the pandemic experience really echoes the concept of this film,” he explained.
One of the stories in the film is about a pregnant lady flying to the USA, which is indeed based on a true story.
“Some of my friends, especially Westerners, don’t really believe that story when the lady says, like, telling the officer honestly that she’s pregnant. That’s true, because I have a lot of friends who do this kind of thing. They just get pregnant and plan to give birth in the US. It’s not illegal. It depends on the officer. So, their job is to persuade the officer that they just want to give birth to their child in the US and then return to China. I also like the fact that when she mentioned her husband is a government official, that was so true. I think most Asians deal with it like that.”
Yang further explained that his stories in the film are a combination of different people around him during the Covid pandemic, where the experience really altered some of the stories. The film started development in 2017, but three years of the pandemic changed some of the narratives. The scene of the girl in the quarantine hotel is a result of that.
“I think hotel rooms are very generic and similar everywhere in the world. That’s why I’m fascinated by that, because another thing is that when I put it in a different context, like the context of Chinese people, it’s idiosyncratic in that concept. What I want to do with this film is use the modern concept of a hotel room as a cinematic space to tell a story about contemporary Chinese people,” he added.
This film is a culmination of a lot of hard work and working around Covid lockdowns. “Towards the end of the production in China, the city was almost in lockdown. We had one last scene to shoot at that time, but the lockdown was so quick that we had to dismiss the whole crew. There was no chance that we could make it in China anymore. So, my producer and his wife decided to extend the scope to not only China but also Chinese people abroad. We decided to make the second-last scene in another country to intensify the feeling of being a stranger. So, you are not only a stranger in your home country but also in another country, showing the struggle, psychologically and physically. That scene where a Chinese guy is getting ready as a street performer is the most personal scene for me because I read the monologue in that scene. There are a lot of Chinese people doing that in the street, especially in places like Las Vegas, performing as exotic Eastern characters to make some money.”
Through this film, Yang aims to challenge all the stereotypes about Eastern countries, Chinese people, and China, and use a modern concept to tell the story of contemporary Chinese people.
Shengze Zhu produced Stranger for Burn The Film, which also takes care of sales and distribution. Gloria Zerbinati serves as the film’s publicist.
We were delighted to be covering the 58th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival on the ground. Explore our coverage here.
