Venice 2025: A Soil, A Culture, A River, A People | Interview with Viv Li

As I’m waiting for Viv to arrive, I’m a little fretful as I’m not sure what to expect. I found out from her biography that she is Chinese, but has lived all around the world. Her list of film qualifications is extensive and her filmography very promising.

When she meets me for our interview, I feel an instant connection because she is dressed casually, not like an auteur but like a free spirit. On her T-shirt I see a familiar face of David Bowe as Starman giving me attitude. And so our conversation starts in a friendly atmosphere as we overlook the sunny square in front of Palazzo del Casino on Lido.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: Perhaps since we started off casually maybe you can tell me a little bit how you got into film. How did you start making movies?

Viv Li: I’ve been telling this story many times, like how it all started. And then, at one point, I realized it wasn’t really true. I used to say I got really inspired by the Hong Kong films that I used to watch when I was young, and then European films as I got older. And then all of a sudden, when I look back on all the important decisions that I made in my life, they were all quite random. So how I got into filmmaking is really just some very random things that happened.

I was in China, studying, and then I got a chance to go to the UK to study and I got really lonely when I was first in the UK. So I started making a lot of friends and we would gather in a group, and then we would perform some jokes in a bar just to have fun. And then it so happens that there was a teacher sitting there who suggested that I should transfer to the drama department, because back then I was studying literature and he transferred me to drama.

That was my first real encounter with that kind of career. But then I went more into arts and performance. So it’s not until 2018 that I made my first ever film. And before that I was also just doing a bit of fashion. And because my English was good in China, I was translating scripts for some foreign directors and all of this got me into filmmaking. Just really random things. And little by little they pushed me into fundraising and filmmaking. And my first film was in 2020. That was my student film that screened at IDFA in Amsterdam.

After that, it was the pandemic so I couldn’t go back to China and I got stuck in Berlin for two years. There was nothing to do, I couldn’t really find a job and I had to be at home so I started writing scripts. So, you know, I have to thank the pandemic as well, that I had to write the scripts and last year, I premiered my first fiction film in Cannes – Across the Borders.

And that’s it. All of these little things that seem so irrelevant, but, actually, little by little I became like a real filmmaker.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: I can relate to this because I’m also a literature student. Everything you learn allows for a change in your career, almost like an upgrade. Every little thing brings me a little bit higher up to a new level.

Viv Li: Yeah. Sometimes they’re random reasons. If it wasn’t for the pandemic, I probably would have had to find a job to pay my bills. But because of the pandemic, I couldn’t. So I had to do this film thing that doesn’t seem like a job. It’s so crazy.

So I’m really grateful. But nevertheless, I was really inspired by films when I was young. I watched films as a way to travel as well, because when I was little there was like, nobody traveling.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: The same for me. When you heard somebody travel a little bit further than your bordering countries they were a star. If somebody told you that they went to China or America or India. It felt like something out of science fiction.

Your own film here at Venice is a little bit dystopian and slightly sci-fi in the way the main character and their perception of the world is depicted. How would you say that your perception of the world inspired this story?

Viv Li: Many elements form the idea of the film. I realized that in my creative work I usually find that there is something just stuck in my mind that I can’t forget about. Then some other things get stuck in my mind and when all of those things get together, it becomes a more solid idea.

I have an uncle who used to live in Germany in the 90s. He spent maybe less than a year in Germany for training reasons. And still now, 20 years later, he still keeps talking about some of his experiences back in the 90s. So I listened to his stories again and again and again and they are ironed into my memory. And in the film, there’s some very detailed things that I attribute to my uncle – like the blond girl and the car and all that stuff. So, this is like a constant thing that whenever I have dinner with him, he’ll tell me about this.

I kept thinking about this all the time and that’s how I wrote the script – it was during the pandemic as well and it was just a really lonely time and I was scared. So one of my friends said to me that there was a Chinese garden in Zurich and maybe I could go there and relieve my homesickness. And I did go to Zurich to see the gardens. They were filled with this cliche Chinese architecture and when I saw it I felt even sadder because I couldn’t see the real thing. So this feeling was stuck in my mind.

And another thing happened when I was in a residency in Hanover and I was looking up some information about the history of Hanover. I found out that there was a fake Hanover or Little Hanover in China. That’s when I was thinking, oh, my God, all of these things together can be a very interesting story.

Also because the world seems to be crumbling little by little. And my view of the future, especially with AI and all that stuff is that I’m really in fear of AI and all the things that are stealing a lot of our joy and imperfection of being human. So I put all of these elements together and it became the film.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: And how did your experiences of living in Asia and Europe and South America shape this cultural dystopia within the film?

Viv Li: I read this book that the editor of this film recommended to me. It was a very hard read for me. The writer is a UK is a Hong Kong scholar. I can’t remember his name, but in his book he basically explains how with globalization cultures are disappearing, because the world is more and more connected and we just become less and less individual and less and less a part of our own culture. For example, I’m wearing Western clothes and nobody in Japan wears a kimono anymore. And nobody in China wears handmade clothes anymore.

All this globalization and the development of technology is just a process of assimilation, of everybody becoming the same. More and more people speak English, and we can communicate less and less in our own languages. Everything is disappearing. 

While I was traveling around, I’ve been traveling around for 15 years now, I’ve had some beautiful encounters with very intimate cultures, but they are all in very distant places. In a big city, you feel that everything is the same.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: Especially within Europe, if you visit a few capitals in Europe, you feel like you have visited them all.

Viv Li: And I think the scariest thing is that you go to Asia and you feel the same. And then you go to Africa and maybe you feel the same in a big city. So I just feel like culture is disappearing in many, many different ways. And I do think that culture is the fundamental definition of what human beings are, what humanity is.

So in the film, I try to form a future that has basically nothing, it’s a place that is only gray. And although the main character is an Asian looking person, in the end he speaks English and he utters only three words. And they are sounds because people don’t need to speak anymore. He speaks with difficulty because he hasn’t spoken in a long time. And I imagine nowadays, we shifted from calling people to only texting and I just feel like people will speak less and less. That’s how I created the last scene and that’s why he doesn’t speak throughout the whole film. With that, I gave a very depressing view of the future.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: You mentioned culture and how important it is to preserve it. And yet it seems like a human instinct to come together and forget about your traditions and your roots and become the same as everyone else. We are trying so hard to be individual and yet we want to conform.

Viv Li: Yeah. It’s really crazy. And, I certainly don’t have the answer to it, but it is a very interesting phenomenon. When you try to be more and more open to all these things, then you kind of just become nothing. In Chinese we have this beautiful metaphor that says that when you go to the extreme, you return to zero. I feel like the world is reaching such an extreme that you feel like it’s so connected, yet you are not connected at all. I really feel that. And I feel that every single day. And it’s something that is quite urgent for us. So, yeah, I try to relay this feeling of my life into this film.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: What would you say are director influences and film and theme influences that helped you create this story?

Viv Li: I would say that when I was making the film, I didn’t really think too much about the influences and they didn’t really become clear to me until we were editing the film. The editing process was a bit difficult for me because there were a lot of things that I wanted to relay, but couldn’t.

We were editing in Belgium, and there was a retrospective of Wong Kar Wai in the cinema in Brussels. I went to see all these films and all of a sudden I just became really happy and really sad at the same time. I was really happy to see all his films, but it triggered all my memories from the past when I started watching films when I was like 12 or 13. I was sad because I realized I can never go back to that time anymore.

The 90s was such a beautiful time for Hong Kong and also for Asia, for China when everything was just opening up, the internet was developing and it was so exciting. We were reaching the millennium. It was an exciting time. I feel the energy was so different back then.

And I realized that in my film this person has traveled to the past and he sees the past the same way that I saw it in Wong Kar Wai films, it was like a memory that you can’t relive anymore. That very melancholic feeling that Wong Kar Wai created really defined the look and feel that we wanted to reach. So I would say that in the editing process, that retrospective really helped me push through.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: I’m interested in this feeling of not being able to go back, the nostalgia that pains you a lot, even though there are happy memories. And if you don’t turn back from the past, in time it will consume you.

Viv Li: Yeah, 100%. I think I am being consumed a little bit and that is because I’ve been living abroad for more than ten years and a lot of memories that surfaced from my childhood, from my teenage years. But then I realized that the more I think about it, the more painful it is for me and then it’s more difficult for me to live my life now. Maybe that’s called aging.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: Possibly, yeah. What you’re describing reminds me of my experience when I was living abroad. Do you think there’s a place for you in China today?

Viv Li: Yes, absolutely. One of my friends said that the way they define where your real home is is to ask yourself if there’s anybody picking you up from the airport. And I realized that’s definitely Beijing, because in Berlin, nobody ever picked me up. I live there, and I feel very comfortable there, but nobody ever picks me up. And Beijing is where my family is, so I think Beijing is that place.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: Would you say that the cultural scene in Beijing today is open to artistry and to filmmaking? I know there are a lot of Chinese movies that are maybe not so common to be screened in Europe, but that the cinema there is thriving.

Viv Li: I think there is a lot of industry there and there are a lot of things happening. Half of my team is from China and they’re very skilled. I’m very impressed by their artistry and also their professionalism. But I wouldn’t know so much because my work is in Berlin. I have some connection with the Chinese film industry, but I wouldn’t know so much. I do want to explore more. I’m going back to China more just to be more connected. Because I’m in a good place to do this.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: And your film was shot in 16 mm, right? What did you gain from this type of medium and not shooting digitally?

Viv Li: I was always fascinated by film. I would lie if I didn’t say that. And now a lot of film directors are becoming fascinated with the look. I was really pulled in by that. So, it was on my mind. I already wanted to shoot on 16 mm for my other film that was shot in the desert, but because of logistics, it’s just very hard to do.

And then this time, I just really wanted to give this option a try. And we could see that the look of the 16 mm – the 80s, 90s look saved us a lot of time in creating the feeling of nostalgia. It also created this delusion, like, where is he? What time is it? It’s a kind of  calm contrast that you can create with this 16 millimeter. It turned out to be a very good decision. It gives the film a very different look.

I also do analog photography. I have an analog camera here with me. I just really like the feeling of being surprised and having no control. It’s because I come from a more documentary background. My first film, I started as a documentary filmmaker, and I always get impressed by how reality can give you a better dramaturgy or a better solution to all the things that you’re trying to create yourself.

And that also made me realize it’s very difficult to play God, to create a perfect world. But if you rely on reality and just let go sometimes, it can be very beneficial. And with 16 mm, there’s a lot of things that we have to consider, like time and, and money and the roles are very expensive. And also, once you shoot, you don’t know what’s going to happen.

There is one scene, I don’t know if you remember, there’s the flickering. And these lights are intercut with his opening eyes and that part, all those shots were scratched and was actually a mistake from the first AC when she was changing the role, she scratched the film, and she was very apologetic. But when I looked at it, I thought that was very interesting. And I think it serves as a very good transition scene in that part when he’s transported back to the future and you feel like his life is scratched.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: And what about the editing of 16 mm? Is there still the cutting process now?

Viv Li: Now this is all scanned and then cut digitally. I think it makes a lot of sense to shoot 16 mm on film so you can get the specific look, but it doesn’t really make sense to edit it. I would like to learn the process one day to see how it was before and appreciate what we have now.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: What about the visual contrast you mentioned and going back to Wong Kar Wai, the moment you mentioned him, I could see that type of color style in your movies. How did you approach this visual contrast between the past, and the present?

Viv Li: We already had this concept that the future would be a place that basically has no color. There is no nature, because nature has been destroyed by human beings. There is no more desire. I read there was an experiment done by scientists and they said that the more we have, life becomes very convenient, but in the end people’s desire is reduced. So I feel like the future is a place where people have no more desire, no more need to communicate. And hence the future is very gray and very dark. And it feels lifeless and nothing that is alive. There’s no animals, there’s no creatures and there’s no trees.

So with that, we want the other spaces and traveling to be more exaggerated. So we have the trees, the dancing club and the bar. This is all a bit too colorful. My production designer was worried that we made the bar too colorful. But I think the colors really give it a big contrast and make you think. 

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: When you started talking about color and everybody being sort of the same in gray, it just reminded me of Ikea and of the furniture we have today which can fit into everyone’s home and makes everyone the same.

Viv Li: Ikea really gets me so annoyed. When I saw this other film, The Last Viking,  there were a lot of Ikea jokes and I felt it was so strange. I own almost nothing from Ikea because it’s just creepy for me to conform like that.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: To finish up, how did you enjoy your reception in Venice? What were your experiences of this year’s festival?

Viv Li: I think the general experience, of course, is very beautiful. And you can forgive everything when you see the canals and the gondolas and you see the old houses. It’s a very beautiful experience. And I think for me, the most important thing is that it’s a really good excuse for all the crew to get together one more time. And just to share this beautiful moment. We have our official premiere on the 4th of September. We rented a boat, we’re going to sing karaoke and celebrate. Yeah, we’re gonna share this experience together.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: It sounds like it’s going to be a great time. Good luck with everything and thank you for your time.

Our team is on the ground in Italy to cover the 82nd Venice International Film Festival, running from 27 August to 6 September 2025.