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How Shu Qi drew on her painful childhood for Girl, her directorial debut
The Taiwanese actress-turned-director, whose Girl played at the Venice Film Festival, says the script contains ‘70 per cent of my own self’
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“I feel lucky,” Shu Qi says. It is a modest claim from an internationally renowned film star having a remarkable career moment.
When she sits down with the Post for this interview, the Taiwanese actress turned filmmaker is at the Venice Film Festival with the sensitively hewn drama Girl, her directorial debut that has just played in competition.
It comes hot off the back of a starring role in Chinese auteur Bi Gan’s experimental three-hour sci-fi epic Resurrection, which won the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in May, while she is about to star in the (unrelated) Taiwanese Netflix drama series The Resurrected.
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Incidentally, all three titles will next screen at the 30th Busan International Film Festival in South Korea, which runs from September 17 to 26.
That is quite a year for any artist, but Shu says: “I think last year, 2024, was my special year.”
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She is probably referring to the time she shot Girl. Truth be told, however, it all began another 12 months before that, at the 2023 Venice Film Festival, when she was on the jury that awarded Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things the Golden Lion for best film.
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