New Works on Screen | Ms. Pearl from Refreshing Chinese Cinema Unit to Be Screened on September 15

The film Ms. Pearl screened in the Refreshing Chinese Cinema unit of the 24th Shanghai International Film Festival (SIFF) will be released nationwide from September 15. Directed by Li Yunbo and starred by Hu Xiangzhen, it reveals the emotional world of an overage female youth.

Ms. Pearl is about to celebrate her fortieth birthday. As the hostess of an emotional show of a radio station, she has been meeting with romantic setbacks. One day, she learned that her mother had cancer. To fulfill her mother's wish of seeing the daughter get married and let her leave the world peacefully, Pearl had to have blind dates. And this is the story of Ms. Pearl.

As the third feature film of Li Yunbo, a film critic, screenwriter, and director, Ms. Pearl casts spotlight on contemporary women to capture their life and emotions in a poetic shooting language, and brings into life a female image caught in both life and spiritual dilemmas. In the film, the absence and presence of several key characters are carefully orchestrated to constitute the accents of the heroine’s daily life.

Li Yunbo, the director of the film, has been serving as a TV director for many years. In 2016, he wrote and directed his first feature film Something in Blue. In 2019, he produced the martial arts suspense film Wild Swords. And the two has been shortlisted for several domestic and foreign film festivals, such SIFF, San Sebastián International Film Festival, Osaka International Film Festival, San Diego International Film Festival, etc.

In Ms. Pearl, Li Yunbo adopts again the life and situational narrative he’s best at, which features the structure of a feature film and the semi-documentary filming techniques. While following the development of the character's emotions, the long shots he resorted a lot to have given the performers the freedom for creation for them to revive real impromptu dialogues and each scene of everyday life.

During the 24th SIFF this year, the film's main crew made an appearance at the post-screening meeting. "This film comes with a middle-aged quality. The middle age life is complicated with a mix of joys and sorrows. Just like our film soundtrack, it paints life like the water of the Pearl River, which runs on and on yet is beyond description. Everyone has to face trivial things." Li Yunbo said, this is a film that uses the film language to peek into a woman's inner world, feelings, and emotions. The female character in the film comes from real life, and her emotions and thoughts are unreservedly put on the screen. This is the unique beauty of middle-aged women and the beauty of the film.

Ms. Pearl is starring Hu Xiangzhen, a well-known intermedia hostess and actress from Guangdong. In the film, she shows the thoughts and choices about life, work, and love of a contemporary woman with compelling performance. "In Guangdong, we have a slang 'pearl is covered by straw'. Straw, representing the secular vision, covers up the light of pearls. What we see in the film may be various pressures of women, but after dropping them, we will discover the radiance of every female."

Ms. Pearl was jointly produced by Guangzhou Jiutian Yinghua Media Co., Ltd., Huzhou Yunzhong Film and Television Studio, and Guangzhou Nuozi Advertising Co., Ltd. In addition to being shortlisted for the 24th SIFF’s Refreshing Chinese Cinema unit, it has also won the honor of Work in Progress Lab Wings Project Award at the 4th Pingyao Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon International Film Festival, and the related main creators have also won the H!Future New Talent Awards for newcomer, director and actress of the year at the 3rd Hainan Island International Film Festival with this film.

The Refreshing Chinese Cinema unit of Film Panorama of SIFF will select a number of outstanding films with potential and unique characteristics from hundreds of new Chinese films registered based on an open selection mechanism and evaluation standards every year, and recommend them to more festivals and distribution markets.