Дебютный фильм режиссера Дун Цзе «Приблизь и отдали» рассказывает о поисках пропавшего друга через призму цифровых переписок

A disappearance is the engine of Dong Jie‘s debut feature “Zoom In, Zoom Out,” but the Chinese director is less interested in the mystery of where his character has gone than in what his absence reveals about everyone left behind. The film, which premieres at the Venice Critics’ Week, follows Shi, a young game designer, as he searches the city for his missing roommate Gao, a search that pulls him into an unlikely bond with Gao’s girlfriend YY and into the fragments of chat logs, game avatars and memory that Gao left behind. It is the first feature from Dong, who grew up in Shanghai and trained as a director at the Beijing Film Academy. Before stepping behind the camera, he worked as an editor on “Summer Blur” and “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” and is the author of the short story collection “The Gap of Migration.” His 50-minute thesis film “Break” played at the Pingyao International Film Festival and the Beijing Intl. Short Film Festival, among others. Popular on Variety “Zoom In, Zoom Out” stars Sun Yang and Zhao Tian’ai and was produced by Cao Shanshan of Do Something Films. Li Zhong served as cinematographer, Qin Yanan edited the film and Hank Lee composed the score. Variety is exclusively unveiling a clip from the film. Dong wanted the disappearance to do more than drive a plot. “Why is it that we only begin to reconsider what someone means to us after they disappear? Do we really care about them, or are we confronting a deeper sense of unease within ourselves?” he says. He calls that delayed reckoning “particularly reflective of the way we relate to one another today,” pointing out that people can “stay connected” with each other constantly and still only realize what someone meant to them once that person “goes offline forever.” Shi and YY piece together who Gao was from chat logs, an in-game avatar and other digital traces. Digital traces, Dong says, “can never give us a complete understanding of a person,” and the process of assembling them is driven as much by “a deep-seated desire to pry, as well as an impulse to play” as by any real wish to know someone. “The fragments may be real, but the picture we ultimately piece together may be one we have created because we want it to be true,” he says. “The way we choose, connect and interpret these traces may reveal far more about ourselves than about the person we are trying to understand.” Gao never appears onscreen, but Dong built the film around his absence rather than his return. “Gao is the medium through which Shi and YY become connected,” he says. “He never truly leaves; he remains a ghostly third presence in their relationship.” That structure, Dong says, was designed to bring out “Shi’s hesitation, vulnerability, self-scrutiny, and detachment,” and to surface an emotion he thinks is rarely given its due onscreen. “We are often ashamed to talk about jealousy, but to me, it is one of the most universal and authentic emotions between people,” he says. “Ultimately, this jealousy transcends the boundaries of love or sexuality. What it truly exposes is Shi’s deep recognition of and longing for Gao.” The production built its own game rather than rendering one with visual effects. “We did not want to turn the game into a spectacle or make it look like another world through visual effects or production design,” Dong says. “The game is simply the game, and visually, it should feel like itself.” The deliberately rough look of the in-house game had an effect he hadn’t fully anticipated: “Its mechanical movements of the avatars and rough modeling made it easier to sense the person behind the controls, and the emotions invested in the game.” Rather than separating reality, memory and the virtual world by logic, Dong says, “we let the same emotion move between them.” Producer Cao Shanshan has described the film as a reflection of the “spiritual outlook” of young people in China today. “I feel a deep sense of contradiction,” Dong says. “Today, my generation is unusually preoccupied with the self.” He points to a culture of psychological tests and messaging to “love ourselves” and “protect our inner worlds.” He adds, “Our need for morality, meaning and emotion never disappears. When we have nowhere to place these needs, they find their way into larger, more abstract narratives and identities.” He describes the film as an attempt to reclaim a belief “that meaning can be created through the difficult, concrete work of living with other people.” “Zoom In, Zoom Out” treats the digital world as part of everyday life rather than an escape from it. “I wanted to accept the reality we live in and ask how we can live with technology now that it has fundamentally changed our lives,” Dong says, adding that cinema’s usual dystopian take on tech “has become somewhat clichéd.” He says, “I believe we have to start by trusting that our world is real, and that our feelings, experiences, and relationships are real.” Asked how he squares that with the genre’s usual pessimism, he says simply, “I choose to remain optimistic.” He adds, “Perhaps even blindly optimistic.” The Venice premiere marks Dong’s international launch as a director. “The most meaningful thing about premiering my first feature in Venice is that a film rooted in my own life experience and cultural context can be seen and understood by audiences from very different backgrounds,” he says. He adds that he is looking forward to seeing Italy beyond the festival, including the Peggy Guggenheim Collection and a ride on a Venice water bus. Looking past this film, Dong says he wants his next project to be “more genre-driven while still having a strong authorial voice.” He describes himself as less a director than a creator who works across mediums, including fiction and podcasts. “Different mediums force me to think and create in different ways, while also inspiring one another,” he says. “Ultimately, they are all ways of trying to understand people and the world.” Watch the clip here: