An Unfinished Film

When an unfinished film, reborn, is stuck in stasis again, its creators meditate on how their lives have been interrupted and transformed by the pandemic.

Chinese auteur Lou Ye tackles the seismic disruption brought by COVID through an exhilarating blend of drama and documentary. In An Unfinished Film, a fictional crew stumbles upon 10-year-old footage of a (real) aborted queer film and sets about reuniting the cast to complete it with a new act. But this is early 2020, and fate has other ideas – the unexpected comes crashing down on Wuhan, the film is halted again and the project eventually morphs into something else entirely.

Summer Palace (MIFF 2006), Ye’s devastating romance centred on the Tiananmen Square massacre, competed for the Palme d’Or in 2006. He returned to the Croisette in 2024 with this fascinating hybrid work that ingeniously repurposes old footage from his own filmography, which he splices together with smartphone footage and performed sequences. This time around, his Cannes entry garnered a nomination for the L’Œil d’Or, in recognition of his clear-eyed efforts to make sense of the madness.

“Out of agony and chaos, [Ye] has created something mysterious, moving and even profound. Five stars.” – The Guardian