Winter Vacation is one of the latest titles in the Tiger Releases 10 to Watch series. Poet, novelist an filmmaker Li Hongqi won a Golden Leopard in Locarno for his film. Here's an interview with Winter Vacation's director.
Winter Vacation is set in Inner Mongolia. What made you decide to make a film about this region and how is this location important for the story you aim to tell?
Inner Mongolia is with her freeze cold weather and the few inhabitant just suitable for being a background in this movie.
You have been complimented with your use of humor in this overall bleak and sad film, while you have also commented (at the Film Festival of Locarno) that the humor in Winter Vacation does not make the audience comfortable, but rather uneasy. What is the purpose of humor in your filmmaking?
I feel I do not have the courage to face directly what I feel about the world. Therefore I use humor to, in a certain way, relieve my detest against it.
The children in Winter Vacation appear very intelligent and certain about their future, perhaps even more than the adults. Is this at all meant as a reflection of reality?
This is perhaps meant as a kind of humor too. In reality, I don’t believe kids. Of course I love them, but I also don’t trust them.
Besides film director, you are also poet and novelist. How do these three art forms interact in your work, and where lies your eventual preference as a profession?
Through engaging myself in doing these three art forms, they are firstly the ways I know myself and know the world. Secondly, they are my profession.
You are compared with other film directors like Michael Haneke, Jim Jarmusch, Aki Kaurismäki and Roy Andersson because of your sober and misanthropic cinematic style. How do you feel about this?
Being a real sober, it is impossible not to be a misanthropic. And being a misanthropic, it is impossible not to be a real sober.
Winter Vacation was made with the financial support of the Hubert Bals Fund of the International Film Festival Rotterdam. What is your regard of this fund?
The Hubert Bals Fund helped me to definitely finish the film. I really appreciated that.