A film-maker, just like dad

Chinese film-maker Zhang Mo had a huge advantage over others when she decided to become a director.

She could learn the ropes from her father, acclaimed director Zhang Yimou, on the set of films such as historical drama The Flowers Of War (2011) and family drama Coming Home (2014).

"Watching him was like watching a Wikipedia of film-making. I learnt all aspects from him.

As I was an editor and assistant director on some of his movies, directing and editing later on became the best benefits for me in terms of making my own movie," she tells The Straits Times in an e-mail interview.

"If he were not a director, I probably wouldn't have become a director."

Zhang Mo, 33, makes her feature debut with Suddenly 17, a comedy romance in which a woman finds her 17-year-old self in her 28-year-old body.

The film, which is now showing in Singapore, came about because she was taken by the Internet novel of the same name, in which a person's 17-year-old mindset tries to change the fate of her 28-year-old self.

"I have had the experience of going overseas and going back to China, so I thought I should make a story about finding oneself.

I think this is something intriguing to the post-1980s and 1990s generations," she says.

Zhang, who is reportedly married to an American working at the Hollywood agency representing her, moved to the United States when she was 15.

She studied architecture at Columbia University in New York and later received her master of fine arts in film-making from the prestigious Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.

She then returned to China to work on her father's films, starting in the late 2000s.

The process indirectly helped in the casting for Suddenly 17, as she met the Chinese actress Ni Ni on the set of The Flowers Of War, about a group of women finding sanctuary in a church after Nanjing fell to the Japanese in 1937.

"The way she transformed herself was pretty amazing - from a young girl into a mature woman.

That transformation really stuck in my mind," says Zhang. It convinced her that Ni Ni was the perfect choice to play the lead role.

It so happens that her father's new period film, The Great Wall, will also be released in China and Singapore soon, but the prospect of their movies clashing at the box office does not faze her.

She says: "I don't think it is very common for the older generation and the younger generation within a family to release their movies in the same month.

Therefore, it is such a unique period for both of us; it is something to be remembered and celebrated."

Neither is her choice of the comedy romance genre an attempt to distance herself from her father's lauded dramas.

She says: "I think others may like to compare, but I just want to make a movie with my own style."

Besides, she is a big fan of Zhang Yimou the film-maker.

"I love all my father's films, particularly his first film (Red Sorghum, 1987).

That kind of power, energy and passion probably exists only once in a lifetime."

bchan@sph.com.sg

This article was first published on December 12, 2016.
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