Director Vivian Qu on contemporary women in Chinese cinema
Jul 02, 2025
Since bursting on the scene in 2017 with Angels Wear White, director Vivian Qu has pushed the boundaries of Chinese-language cinema while championing the stories of contemporary women. As her latest drama Girls on Wire hits the screen, she tells Mathew Scott why the best films help us understand the world a bit better
Director Vivian Qu’s latest film, Girls on Wire, is set in and around both China’s martial arts film industry and the country’s shady crime- riddle underbelly. So perhaps it’s no surprise that a screening of the drama prompted a strong response at this year’s Hong Kong International Film Festival from an audience that included the acclaimed local director Ann Hui, famed for gripping, socially conscious work of her own.
Qu says there were questions about the film’s settings, including the southwestern Chinese city of Chongqing in the ’80s and ’90s, right before the nation’s economic boom transformed it into the futuristic metropolis that is has become today, as well as about the film’s use of martial arts film sets as another backdrop to all the drama that unfolds. It was much the same when Qu’s film made its world premiere in competition for the main Golden Bear award at this year’s 75th Berlin International Film Festival.
The Beijing-based Qu broke through with her second feature as director, the 2017 drama Angels Wear White. Like Girls on Wire, it featured women at its core, with its story of a young girl who witnesses a sexual assault, and a star-making turn from a then-12-year- old Vicky Chen Wenqi. It picked up a Golden Horse Award for Best Director, played in competition at the prestigious Venice festival and was nominated for five Asian Film Awards.
In Girls on Wire, Qu reunites with Wenqi alongside another rising mainland star in Liu Haocun, and they play cousins and childhood best friends drawn apart and then together again over 20 years. They fill the film full of life – despite its dark overtones and the grimness of what unfolds as fate devours the pair.
As a producer, Qu helped cement “China noir” as a genre through director Diao Yinan’s Berlinale Golden Bear winner Black Coal, Thin Ice (2014). As a director (and screenwriter) in her own right, she seems determined to push the boundaries of Chinese-language cinema, specifically by turning audiences’ attention on the stories of contemporary women, as much as contemporary China.
How was the reaction to the film here in Hong Kong?
I think now there are a lot of young people here in Hong Kong who are originally from the mainland. The first question was from a girl from Chongqing, and it’s a Chongqing story so she was wondering about the background. The film came from my research into Chongqing and the people who actually lived through the 1980s and ’90s and did their business – the garment business – at the wholesale market there. That was a time when basically all of China went to Guangzhou to get the latest fashion from Hong Kong, from Japan, from everywhere, and then went back to their hometown to make copies. That was really the background for the family business that was shown in my film. Afterwards, another Chongqing girl told me she’d heard similar stories from her mother and, now, to be able to see it in the film, it was an amazing experience for her because whatever her mother told her in the past became real up there.
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And that’s one of the great takeaways from the film. It just feels so real. How did you ensure the script would work like that?
I actually did interview a number of families who lived through that period, who had businesses at the time, so the two main characters were based on real-life people. I had heard tragic stories of drug addiction, like in the film, and of women who had tried to hold up the family business, of how eventually the business really got sucked up by the addiction, and how, then, that really affected the young generation. So, there are many details from real life.
It’s a film that’s really built around your two stars and this very believable relationship between them. How important was it to cast them both?
When I was casting for Tian Tian, I thought of [Liu Haocun] because I felt she has this dual quality. On one hand, she’s fragile, she’s sensitive and she can be withdrawn. But at the same time, she has that inner strength that she can be rebellious and strong. So I asked her to come to my studio to read the script and after reading it, immediately she said she felt very emotionally connected to Tian Tian and she wanted to play her, despite the fact that she doesn’t have the same kind of background or experience.
And you’d worked with Vicky Chen Wenqi before, of course.
Yes, she worked with me on Angels. But she was only 12, playing a girl of 16. So when I started casting, I didn’t think of her because she was young. She was still only 20 and I was thinking of someone around 26, 27. But then I saw some of Wenqi’s photos – still photos – and she looks very mature. I thought, maybe I’ll see. If she could play a 16-year-old when she was 12, maybe she could play a 26-year-old when she’s 20. So I sent her the script and asked her to read it without telling her who I wanted her to play, and then afterwards I asked her, “So who do you feel more connected to?” She said, “I feel more connected to Fang Di,” which is exactly what I had in mind.
And how did you then develop her character?
I asked her to watch films of great female characters, you know, mature women of all ages, like played by Isabelle Huppert and Maggie Cheung – all the great actresses – and to really try to look at how mature women do all the subtle things that they do. You know, all the subconscious things, like the way they move and respond to what is going on around them.
The scenes where Liu Haocun as Tian Tian works as a stuntwoman are gripping. How did she train for that?
Throughout the film, we wanted to emphasise the wire work stuntwomen do – the sound of wire, the friction, all the things they put their bodies through, like the pain from the vests and the costumes they must wear. Just everything they endure. And she put herself through all that.
Are we seeing more focus on women and stories about women across Chinese- language cinema?
Yes, but I think at the time it’s still like people are trying to find ways to really portray the female experience, and there are a lot of discussions going on and people, especially young filmmakers, are still trying to differentiate between what is the male gaze and what is the female gaze. Is it alright to show the hardship of how a woman experiences things or should we only show the triumph of the female character? There are a lot of discussions and debates going on, and I think it’s a good thing. This kind of discussion wasn’t there even five years ago.
Are we seeing a younger generation who are more curious – even demanding – when it comes to the Chinese-language films they watch, and their subject matter?
I think Martin Scorsese said that films should be about revelation. I feel that the films that have affected me the most are the ones that tell me a little bit about truth – truth in life, truth about the world – and those films really change how I view the world, how I understand the world. They make me understand it better. So, I really want to make films that can, in a way, help people understand the world a little better. Films can create false illusions or allow you to escape. Films can do that, too. But for me, the films that stay in my mind are films that reveal to me some truth about life, especially as we’re living in such a crazy world – we don’t even know what is real and what is not anymore. So I just hope we see more films like that. And the younger generation, they love great films; they’re really eager to see great films, they want to learn, and they want to understand what great filmmaking is all about.
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