2020-12-29

New Film Express | \"Kill the Shadow\": the Asian New Talent Award nominated film to be released on

The suspense film "Kill the Shadow" directed by Sun Liang, an up-rising post-90s star, will be released on December 29. With Ren Jiangzhou as executive producer and Zhao Kaiwen as producer, the film was nominated for the Best Actor and Best Cinematography at the Asian New Talent Award 21th Shanghai International Film Festival in 2018. This winter, it will bring the audience an absurd and bizarre journey to western China.

“With nowhere to go, Zhang Jinsheng wandered alone in the factory after its shutdown. A weird sound brought him into another world where heavy snowfall at one moment, silent desolation the next. There, he saw a different version of himself.”

Set on the vast Loess Plateau, "Kill the Shadow" presents the confused desires of an ordinary young man in the moment. By combining the local dialect of Linxia, Gansu Province, and a series of seemingly unrelated dreams, director Sun Liang breaks the traditional realistic narrative pattern to interpret this new "western story".

In 2018, "Kill the Shadow" was shortlisted for the Asian New Talent Award 21th Shanghai International Film Festival. Ma Chenglong as the main character was nominated for the Best Actor, and Photographer Wang Haoda was nominated for Best Cinematography. In addition, "Kill the Shadow" was also presented at other film festivals at home and abroad, such as the 41st Montreal World Film Festival, the 1st Pingyao Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon International Film Festival, and the 4th Silk Road International Film Festival, receiving several award nominations.

The creative team of "Killing the Shadow" is from Lanzhou, Gansu Province. Director Sun Liang was born in 1990. As his first feature film, the script with a strong pioneering stream of consciousness took three years to write. Now, Sun Liang is working on his next feature film "Born in Illusive", which was also shortlisted for the "New Talent Project" section of the 21th SIFF Project in 2018.