Lou Ye’s acclaimed ‘An Unfinished Film’ remains unfinished

The most extraordinary thing about Chinese director Lou Ye’s An Unfinished Film (2024) is how ordinary it is, considering the attention it has garnered globally. In semi-documentary style, the 106-minute flick follows a film crew as they try to resurrect a 10-year-old project, and find themselves quarantined at a hotel near Wuhan, China, in the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Lou’s movies are known for their intricate storylines and complex figures, but An Unfinished Film is surprisingly simple, containing little plot or character development.

Since its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival last year, the modest feature has become one of the most lauded and controversial Chinese movies in recent years. Although it is censored in China, the film has won Best Director for Lou at the Golden Horse Awards in Taiwan, the most prestigious stage for Sinophone cinema. Overseas Chinese viewers packed the screenings in Paris and Tokyo; some shouted at the end, “Lou Ye, you are the greatest director from China!”

Yet, the accolades the film has received are not so much an assessment of its artistic value but a recognition of its creators’ courage. That the movie was made has proven a possibility. The positive reception it has generated reflects the audience’s hunger for more honest portrayals of the pandemic. The more important question, then, is not whether An Unfinished Film is a masterpiece — it is not — but why so many seem to demand it to be.

Before lockdowns were lifted, China did many millions of tests a day to uncover cases of COVID-19 — part of its zero-COVID policy. Above: People line up for nucleic acid tests to detect the virus at a public testing site in Beijing.

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Before lockdowns were lifted, China did many millions of tests a day to uncover cases of COVID-19 — part of its zero-COVID policy. Above: People line up for nucleic acid tests to detect the virus at a public testing site in Beijing.

Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

The struggle of artistic pursuit against personal and political constraints is a subtext embedded throughout An Unfinished Film. The story begins in the summer of 2019, when director Xiaorui and his team turn on a 10-year-old computer and try to revive an abandoned film project. They bring back the original lead, Jiang Cheng, to discuss the prospects of completing the shoot. Jiang is played by the acclaimed actor Qin Hao, a regular in Lou’s works. As Jiang and Xiaorui review the decade-old clips, viewers familiar with Lou’s films will recognize figures and scenes from Spring Fever. The 2009 drama also stars Qin Hao, whose character is named Jiang Cheng as well. After making Summer Palace in 2006, an ambitious feature that contains depictions of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, Lou was barred from working in China for five years by the authorities. He filmed Spring Fever in secret during this time, training his lens on a hidden corner of Chinese society: the gay, bisexual and transgender communities.

On screen in An Unfinished Film, Jiang presses Xiaorui on the purpose of making a movie that can never be shown publicly: Are they only entertaining themselves? The film does not answer this question directly, but the narrative fast-forwards to the evening of Jan. 22, 2020. Jiang, Xiaorui and the rest of the crew are staying at a hotel outside Wuhan, as they rush to wrap up filming before the Lunar New Year holiday begins in a few days. While the unfinished project remains ambiguous, the viewer catches glimpses of what the plot might have been about, where Jiang’s character has grown from a wandering youth to a wealthy entrepreneur. By the end of the night, however, all of the crew’s filming plans are suspended. After weeks of obfuscation and denial, the Chinese government suddenly shut down the city of Wuhan and surrounding regions to contain the novel coronavirus outbreak. Other parts of the country also went under quarantine. The order for the Wuhan lockdown was issued at 2 a.m. on Jan. 23, 2020, with little advance warning. The chaos and confusion on the ground are beautifully captured in the film.

Forbidden from leaving their individual hotel rooms, the crew slowly come to terms with the state of indefinite confinement. The 6-inch screens on their smartphones become their window to the outside world and the only connection to their loved ones. By portraying the COVID-19 experience primarily as enduring quarantine, the film pays little attention to the workers whose labor sustained life under lockdown. Jiang and his colleagues complain over video chat about their bland meals, but the people who produce, prepare and deliver the food remain invisible.

Medical workers take swab samples from residents to be tested for the COVID-19 coronavirus in a street in Wuhan in China’s central Hubei province on May 15, 2020.

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In a particularly poignant moment in the film, Jiang stands by the window at night and pretends to capture and punch the shadow of a security guard downstairs. The bruise by his left temple is visible in the dim light. Days earlier, at the onset of lockdown, Jiang tried to break out of the hotel and was beaten up by the guards, who later apologized to him profusely. The dynamics of quarantine have temporarily reversed the power relations between an established actor and the hotel staff. Yet, in the privacy of his room, Jiang does not resist the temptation of violence. He indulges in a fantasy of revenge against his imaginary opponent, who has been rendered defenseless through optical illusions.

Near the end of the film, the initial lockdown that lasted 76 days is lifted in Wuhan. Jiang and the rest of the crew reunite and resume work on their unfinished feature. Director Xiaorui narrates in the background: “I thought we could finish the film soon. But what happened afterwards was something we never expected.”

In the final few minutes, An Unfinished Film speeds through the following two and a half years of the pandemic via a collage of real-life footage: the advent of the omicron variant, increasingly stringent lockdowns and daily testing, a fire in a quarantined building in Urumqi that claimed at least ten lives, protests that erupted across China against the draconian “zero COVID” policy. We see crowds of demonstrators in a tense standoff with the police, before the camera pans back to the fictional crew, who have assembled to review their project that remains unfinished. Text on the screen tells us that it’s April 4, 2023. Over four months have passed since the last frame, when the deadly blaze in Urumqi triggered mass protests. After clamping down on the demonstrations, Chinese authorities abruptly ended all pandemic control operations. A tsunami of infections swept the country. Countless died. While Lou’s film does not try to fit most events that transpired after the Wuhan lockdown into a consistent story, it at least acknowledges that they took place. The mass infections and mass deaths, however, are conspicuously missing.

Chinese director Lou Ye (left) and Chinese actor Hao Qin pose during a photo call for An Unfinished Film at the 77th edition of France’s Cannes Film Festival on May 17, 2024.

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In an interview with a Taiwanese reporter, Lou explained that most of An Unfinished Film was shot in 2021, during an ebb in the pandemic. Before the much more infectious omicron variant appeared at the end of that year, one could still make a coherent narrative out of COVID-19. For Chinese authorities, this was a story of national unity, collective sacrifice, and ultimate victory over the virus. The government partially conceded to initial missteps by casting blame on a handful of local officials in Wuhan, but for much of the first two years of the pandemic, Beijing could point to the relatively low case counts in China as proof of its superior governance, especially when compared with high infection rates in the U.S., its geopolitical rival. During this time, a flurry of films hit Chinese screens that promoted the state-sanctioned account, some featuring footage from ordinary Chinese citizens who kept video diaries of their experience.

The triumphant narrative began to fray when exceedingly harsh lockdown measures could no longer contain the spread of the virus, and the staggering human cost in the name of protecting lives defied all logic. The official justifications for “zero COVID” collapsed when the authorities abandoned their own policies virtually overnight. As the disease tore through the population, the government lost the plot. Unable to admit to its mistakes or spin the narrative, the state deploys silence as a last resort.

A still from the movie, An unfinished film.

Yingfilms Pte. Ltd., Essential Filmproduktion GmbH

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Yingfilms Pte. Ltd., Essential Filmproduktion GmbH

A similar course of action took place in the aftermath of Tiananmen in 1989. After the bloody crackdown, which is shown briefly in Lou’s 2006 film, Summer Palace, the Chinese government released a series of documentaries and related materials, painting the protests as a “counterrevolutionary riot” and the soldiers as guardians of the republic. The concerted propaganda effort lasted for over a year, but the people were not convinced. Failing to seize the narrative, the authorities shifted course and began erasing the record from public memory.

Yet, unlike Tiananmen, COVID-19 is not entirely taboo in China. As the missing final months in the timeline of An Unfinished Film indicates, the people’s reluctance to talk about the pandemic cannot be attributed only to censorship. The film has included the more sensitive images of the anti-lockdown protests, but seems unwilling or incapable to confront what happened next. The magnitude of loss can render even the most eloquent voices speechless. The aversion to speaking of death is compounded by collective culpability.

While “zero COVID” had already proven to be economically unsustainable by mid-2022, the mass demonstrations that prompted the abrupt reopening later that year gave the government a cynical excuse. The state had failed to provide more effective vaccination coverage, especially among the elderly, and squandered precious resources for healthcare on endless testings and lockdowns, but now the authorities could blame the consequences of reopening on the people: This is what you asked for. The pandemic has spared no one, but few are completely without fault.

A protester holds up a white piece of paper against censorship during a protest against China’s strict “zero-COVID” measures on Nov. 27, 2022, in Beijing. Protesters took to the streets in multiple Chinese cities after a deadly apartment fire in Xinjiang province sparked a national outcry as many blamed COVID restrictions for the deaths.

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As anger fades into apathy and grief is aggravated by guilt, the public also chooses silence. Like euphemisms for Mao Zedong-era disasters, where the Great Leap Forward famine is called the “three years of hardship” and the Cultural Revolution becomes the “decade of turmoil,” the COVID-19 pandemic is referred to as “those three years” or “that particular time”; sometimes, it appears only as a mask emoji.

Amid mass reticence, An Unfinished Film is an essential yet incomplete outlet for unprocessed trauma. It affirms but does not disturb. It invokes a hidden memory, but does not enrich it. Like the Chinese government and most of its people, the movie evades mentions of the mass casualties after the pandemic restrictions were removed, therefore foregoing an opportunity to reflect on whether the deaths were preventable and what lessons might be learned. Over the years, Lou has earned the reputation of being the “King of Banned Films” in China. This is high praise for the artist’s audacity, but Lou deserves higher expectations from his audience. The Chinese people deserve better and more diverse stories. The narrative is still unfolding. The work remains unfinished.

An Unfinished Film (2024) is available for purchase or rental on Apple TV, Fandango, Google Play and Prime Video.