XÍNG ZHOU
indie filmmaker
writer / director / producer
Based between Vancouver, Beijing, and Chicago.
去莫斯科海 (TO MARE MOSCOVIENSE)
2024 / Completed
To Mare Moscoviense is inspired by Xíng’s deep reflection on his own upbringing, especially his childhood and early relationships, which delves into the trials and tribulations. It’s a meditation on how our younger selves continue to shape who we become, exploring themes of the complexity, fluidity, and manifold possibilities of human relationships. It is set in the late 1980s in a chinese rural town, a mother and son’s relationship is defined by silence and a mutual inability to reach out to each other. On one sweltering summer afternoon, a transformative encounter with cinema sets the son on a surreal journey that leads him to a rare moment of shared empathy with his mother.
北方满城大雾 (MISTY NORTHERN CITY)
2024 / Released
Misty Northern City is Xing Zhou’s first formal student short film, made during his undergraduate years at the University of Toronto. Inspired by the quiet rhythm of those four years, the film captures a kind of unspeakable solitude that inevitably accompanies anyone living far from home. Set in the cold light of Toronto streets, Misty Northern City observes fragments of youth suspended between companionship and isolation. Through restrained dialogue and long takes, it reflects on the distance between people who share the same space yet remain unseen by one another.
AWAKEN THE DREAMERS
2024 / Released
Awaken the Dreamers is an experimental short film shot on DV, interwoven with AI-generated images to explore the contrast between the real world and collective dreams. Raised in a warm and open-minded family, director Xíng Zhou had rarely paused to observe reality itself. The film turns its gaze toward ordinary moments in downtown Vancouver, a city he has lived in for nine years, capturing fragments of strangers, light, and streets that once felt too familiar to be seen. Through this process, Xíng rediscovers the distance between perception and existence, between what is imagined and what is lived.
2025 / Completed
TAPE, CLOTH, AND BREATH
Tape, Cloth, and Breath was made through half-improvisation in Xíng’s 16MM Production class at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. It’s his first black and white analog film. The film portrays Xíng’s strange dream of three girls each has different desire. Through a Zoom meeting, he tells his friend about it.
陌生朋友 (JUST AN ACQUAINTANCE)
2026 / In Post-Production
Just an Acquaintance is a hybrid film that brings together documentary, narrative, and experimental approaches. Rather than originating from a finished script, the project was conceived just two days before a trip to Southern California, when Xing and two friends decided to film together. The initial idea was simple: to bring a DV camera and record a journey that was already going to happen. After meeting at LAX, Jiaming takes out a DV camera and begins filming his friend Qiao. Qiao is an actress, Xiaofei has a steady job, and the three of them drive across Southern California. They eat at fast-food places, talk on the highways, and play cards in hotel rooms, arguing over things that never quite reach a conclusion. One wants to move away, one plans to stay, and one falls for a stranger he has only seen twice. As the camera enters their daily lives, it begins to look like a story, and once spoken out loud, words also becomes less certain.
Paused in Post-Production
冬光两三晌 (BLUE IN DAWN)
Blue in Dawn is an experimental-narrative short film directed by Xíng Zhou after completing his undergraduate studies. The film originated from a conversation between Xíng and his classmate Jiayi Joye Xu about the nature of human desire. Drawing from their shared background in Theatre and Performance during undergrad, they co-wrote a story that blurs the line between stage and reality. It follows Lu Yao, a theatre actress who is torn between life and the stage, gradually gets lost in the blurring of her identity and emotions. Dreams, reality and theatre intertwine as she struggles with repressed rationality and irresistible primal desires, trying to find her own direction.
浮禽向晚 (FALLING BIRDS AT DUSK)
In Development
Falling Birds at Dusk is Xíng Zhou’s MFA thesis project at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, developed over a year of writing and visual research. The film marks a turning point in Xíng practice, a work of self-revelation that confronts the fragile distance between memory and family, between truth and perception. After years of silence, Xing began to reexamine his relationship with his father. The film transforms personal memory and longing into a dreamlike narrative, where fragments of emotion and guilt coexist in shifting temporal spaces. It starts with a young photographer, Jiaming, seeing three strangers in a blurry photograph, but they feel hauntingly familiar. Following the image, he enters a dream city that seems both known and alien. The people he encounters speak as if they’ve met before, telling stories only he can understand. Until he encounters a pigeon in a chaotic waiting hall, marking the beginning of a journey with no turning back. Xíng treats this film as a deeply personal journey. By giving the protagonist his former name, Jiaming, he attempts to confront the unresolved shadows that have followed him for years.