How Hong Kong director Jun Li, of Tracey and Drifting fame, made his most daring film yet
Director drew from his own experiences for Queerpanorama, about a man meeting foreign men for sex in Hong Kong. It’s got Berlin buzzing
Ennui is a feeling that can envelop anyone, however creative they are. “Every day I wake up I think to myself, ‘My life is so plain and joyless,’” says Hong Kong filmmaker Jun Li Jun-shuo.
“I mean, people of my age, they do a lot of different stuff. They do pottery. They take up new hobbies. They go hiking. They have this wonderful life on their social media. And every day I wake up … I don’t know what I should do today.”
If this sounds like he is bemoaning his lot, he is not. When we meet for this interview, the 33-year-old writer-director is sitting in the famed Palast at the Berlin International Film Festival, dressed snappily in a light pink jumper.
His third movie, the black-and-white miniature piece Queerpanorama, has just been unveiled, and the buzz about it is already building; trade paper Variety called the film “sexy” after its explicit trailer was released ahead of the festival.
The film concerns an unnamed young man from Hong Kong, played by Jayden Cheung Dik-man, who has one-off sexual encounters with male foreigners; he does not discriminate – Welsh, Thai, and German men are among his hookups.
It is an idea that came from Li’s own life. “Because I am a gay director in Hong Kong … [when] I am on the hookup apps, the locals would know that I’m a director,” he explains. “So to have simply casual sex … that is why I tend to meet foreigners.”