‘A New Old Play’ Director Qiu Jiongjiong Sets Foodie Drama ‘Fuxi’ With Top Notch Asian Cast (EXCLUSIVE)

Chinese artist and filmmaker Qiu Jiongjiong has begun production of “Fuxi,” his second feature film, following an acclaimed debut with 2021’s “A New Old Play.”

The film expands on Qiu’s use of history and folklore and uses food as a through-line to explore a narrative that blends myths, legends, literature and folk tales.

The title is a blend of the Chinese words for ‘food’ and ‘joy’ and the setting is a circus tent where a ragtag film crew is busy shooting a gourmet movie. The narrative is told in four chapters, through four festivities and tells a tale that that involves the living, the dying, the dead, and the very long dead.

Qiu has attached a cast that includes Lee Kang-sheng (“Stranger Eyes” and multiple films by Tsai Ming-liang), Lee Hong-chi (“Love Is a Gun,” “Cities of Last Things”), Annie Chen, Darran Wang and Fan Kuang-yao.

The film is already set up as a three-way Taiwan-France-Japan co-production, with producers including Ding Ningyuan, previously an executive with the Hong Kong Asian Film Financing Forum (HAF) and a former producer at Ning Hao’s Dirty Monkeys Studios, and Zhao Jin. Executive producers are Tang Tsai Yang and Jonathan Kim.

Due to an ever-changing landscape for Chinese independent films, the producers aim to reintroduce the film into China after it is completed. In the international space, the film currently has no sales agent.

The producers are open to bringing on board additional international partners and expect to pitch the project as a work in progress at a major project market in December. At project stage this March, it previously won the Project D Award at HAF.

The four parts of the Sichuan-set story are: a funeral feast some 4,000 years ago where a grandmother severs her tail and gifts it to her descendants; a spring festival 3,000 years ago where a former king returns as a bird and suffers at a banquet; A mid-autumn banquet in the 1990s where spirits gather to honor a millennium-old epicurean poet; and a birthday repast at which a waif meets underworld deities.

“As the director and chef, it has always been my interest to extract unadulterated joy from untapped, raw ingredients – everyday life. To me, everyday life is like a fairytale mixed with all flavors,” said Qiu in a statement.

Qiu is a contemporary mainland Chinese artist who has been widely exhibited in China and overseas. Experimenting with cinematic language, he has made six independent documentaries, and his solo fiction film “A New Old Play,” which won the Special Jury Prize at the Locarno festival in 2021 and the best film prize at the Hong Kong International Film Festival’s Firebird (young filmmaker) competition in 2021. His films have been screened at the Smithsonian Asian Art Museum in the U.S., the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the Taipei Film Festival and the Broadway Cinematheque in Hong Kong.

“A New Old Play” is set to be distributed in Japan by Katsuben Cinema Club, in France by Carlotta Films and in Southeast Asia by Cineaste Production House in 2025. 

A retrospective of Qiu’s works will be part of Chinese Cinema Today 2024 presentation this winter in Tokyo and Osaka. And seven of his films have been curated to stream on Taiwan’s Giloo streaming platform.