Chinese actor Dong Zijian just made his directing debut, and it’s a stellar endeavour. The beautifully shot My Friend An Delie, based on the novel by Shuang Xuetao, is a warm shelter amidst the snowy plains of uncertainty. It’ll hold your hand as it takes you along a slow path toward overcoming grief and pain, and you won’t even realise as it does it. 

This, of course, is the ingenuity of someone who is no newcomer to the industry. The Mountains May Depart actor has been on the big screen since 2013, absorbing wisdom and flair as he traverses his own journey, and the culmination of all that experience is in his very first work as director. With great care and a surprising amount of anxiousness for such a solid landing, Dong Zijian successfully adapted the story of Li Mo and An Delie for viewers worldwide to wholeheartedly resonate with. 

My Friend An Delie made its world premiere in Tokyo on the 28th of October, and has since touched all audiences who manage to catch it. Being on the topic of such universal experiences, executed in the beautiful artistry of a promising new director, the film has the momentum to be a hit with viewers across the globe. When the film made its well-received appearance at the 27th Udine Far East Film Festival, we caught Dong Zijian for a heartfelt discussion of his mastery behind the filmmaking process.

View of the Arts: At the Italian premiere of the film, you told audiences you hope that they can find their own An Delie. So I want to ask, to you, what does the idea of An Delie mean in that context?

Dong Zijian: My point of view of An Delie is not only a person, [but] that everyone can find an An Delie of their own at the bottom of their hearts. It’s maybe just a thing, an object, some pictures, something with emotions. The concept of An Delie is about giving people the energy and passion to live positively.

VOA: So, An Delie as an idea is sort of like a token of comfort, is that right?

DZ: It’s a drive. It’s an energy force that you can find in anything like an attachment to an object, or an emotional attachment, that gives you the energy and the drive to live on. Everybody has a different An Delie.

VOA: That’s really lovely.

DZ: So it’s a symbolic thing. Only you can find your own An Delie.

VOA: Then, can I ask, if you want to share, do you have your own personal An Delie?

DZ: I don’t have a friend that I could call An Delie. But I have a very abstract force of energy: a combination of things that keep me going. All my life I’m still searching for my An Delie. But through this movie, I want to take the energy behind my ideal An Delie and inject it into this movie. So the whole process is searching for my An Delie.

VOA: The theme of processing grief is obvious in the film, but if you could encapsulate the story and the intention behind the film, and how it differs from the source material in your own words, what would those be?

DZ: It’s about grief, like you analysed, but you know, oftentimes in your memory, things are a little bit vague. You try not to remember certain things. It’s to the point that it’s painful to dig into your own grief because you might be regretting something you didn’t do or somebody you didn’t connect with. In the movie, it seems like the father was absent, but actually, the father was very nice to him growing up, so when he goes to the funeral, that’s when he reconnects and finds all these memories of his father coming back slowly, warmth filling him up. It’s his way of dealing with grief in such a way.

VOA: That’s really beautiful. There seems to be a theme of colour in the film. With blues in scenes of sorrow and contemplation, and oranges almost seem to represent tokens of comfort, like the fire or the hot air balloon. Except for one scene: the harrowing scene between An Delie and his father, which is swathed in this reddish orange. Was this deliberate? Was there any reason why this broke off from the colour trend of the film?

DZ: It was not a deliberate artistic choice of the colour tone. Sometimes you think it’s a little bit cooler-toned for this reason or a bit warmer for that reason. But the whole movie is shown through the emotions of the character Li Mo, and when he recollects that moment in his memory, he’s showing the emotions he felt at the time. So that shocking red colour was chosen because it’s the colour of all those emotions.

VOA: I think, intentional or not, the fact that it broke off from this theme that wasn’t intentional, made it so much more impactful. We, as the audience, really felt that panic: the same emotions as the characters. Also, the casting is absolutely perfect for the film, so I wanted to ask you, did you intend to play adult An Delie from the start? Or was there a journey in coming to that?

DZ: Er, no [laughs]. At the beginning, I did not plan to cast myself because I was afraid that if I took on too many roles, I wouldn’t do well in all of them. I have to make sure I’m focused. The person who played adult Li Mo is also a good friend of mine. A personal friend of mine. And the whole film is also about friendship, of course. Even casting myself is because I’m free. I don’t charge, right? There’s no actor’s fee for me [laughs]. But because the actor who plays Li Mo is personally a good friend, we already have some sort of chemistry that means when we work together, we don’t have many conflicts or arguments because we are in sync right away. He knows me so much that I don’t have to say a lot of words for him to understand. 

VOA: It was a note that I actually took while watching the film that the actors have such great chemistry. And this was something I personally thought; the actor who plays child Li Mo looks like he could be the son of the actor who plays Li Mo. They look so similar in my opinion

DZ: Yeah, they look so similar. That’s a really interesting point. So we searched for the child actor for a really long time. For about five months, I think. And we were shooting in China, Dongbei province, which is a really cold province and a really big area, and we auditioned through like 10,000 kids. It was a big struggle and took a long time. After four months, we still couldn’t find Li Mo, and just one day, a good friend of mine was walking down the street, and he saw a school having a break time, and he just saw that kid. And he took a picture.

VOA: Did the child actor have a history in acting before that?

DZ: No. He was just an ordinary school kid. 

VOA: That’s incredible! So all the ways that this film came together really happened via friendship: by your friendship with the actor and your friend who spotted this potential actor, that’s really remarkable.

DZ: Yeah, it’s always about friends. And for the whole crew. They all became my really good friends. 

VOA: And what about young An Delie?

DZ: Well, after five months, we still couldn’t find An Delie [laughs]. [Eventually] we found a professional kid. He’s a professional actor. He had played in ten movies before. More than mine [laughs].

VOA: I was so impressed by the child actors because they can do stuff that adult actors can do. Crying, expressing emotions, I was seriously so impressed. And the film has quite a long runtime; it does take its time for all the pieces to come together. Was there any scene that almost didn’t make the cut? And why did you feel that it needed its runtime, even though some viewers with shorter attention spans might not have the patience for it?

DZ: If you kept all the scenes, the film would be a lot longer. Because it was my first movie that I directed so I was a little bit nervous. I tried to make sure I had more choices. There’s one scene we shot at the funeral, and that scene did not make the cut. I felt that if he [Li Mo] makes it to the funeral, it’s the end of the journey, of his almost soul-searching quest. However, right now the way it ended is like he’s still searching, so that makes it open-ended. It fits my intentions for the film. So I cut that scene of the funeral. 

VOA: The pacing was really good. If people give it the patience it needs, it’s really something you can carry with you at the end.

DZ: Thank you. You know me!

Written and interviewed by Maddie Armstrong

Featured image courtesy of Maddie Armstrong for View of the Arts

_{View of the Arts is an online publication dedicated to films, music, and arts, with a strong focus on the Asian entertainment industry. With rich content already available to our readers, we aim to expand our reach and grow alongside our audience by delving deeper into emerging platforms such as K-pop and Asian music more broadly. At the same time, we remain committed to exploring the vibrant and ever-evolving global landscape of film, music, and the arts, celebrating the immense talent and creativity that define these industries worldwide.}