Pudu

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Creative Statement

The story is set in the south, in an old city of southern Fujian culture, where there is a custom called Zhongyuan Pudu, a distinctive festival. While everyone else is wary during the Ghost Festival and goes out less, the people of southern Fujian hold banquets and invite friends. They make offerings to their ancestors, worship gods and spirits, and give alms to wandering ghosts. It is as if the flames of burning paper offerings have broken through the barrier between people and ghosts. The streets of the old city are narrow and lined with traditional red-brick buildings. Young people have moved to apartment blocks in the new districts, and many people from elsewhere who have come to make a living have moved in here. The mix of people from different classes and backgrounds, and the cultural clash between old and new ways of life, give my story plenty to draw on. In that hot typhoon season, desire and impulse burst out

Synopsis

On hot summer days, a few strange fires spread fear through an old city in southern Fujian. Fire investigator Chen Zhongwei takes on the task of solving the case quickly, but who is the real arsonist behind the truth? On an old street of the small city where migrant workers gather, high school physics teacher Qin Sheng has a wife who has been bedridden with paralysis for years, and the family employs Su Meiling, a pretty and capable housekeeper, who is busy trying to bring her daughter from her hometown to attend high school in the city. Wang Dongsheng, an air-conditioning repairman more than ten years younger, admires her mature, sensual beauty, but he is not the only one who sees her charm. The strange fires keep coming: natural disaster or human doing? On the night of Pudu, flames and ashes drift in the air and the streets seem to narrow. On the stage, Dacheng opera is being performed, and its strange tunes drift through every corner of the city. Chen Zhongwei drives through it all. Ahead, the sky glows a devouring blood red, and the gates of a hell of desire are slowly opening.

Genre:

Drama, Crime

Director:

Xu Zhiyong

Screenwriter:

Xu Zhiyong | Zhao Xiaodan

Producer:

Zhao Xiaodan

Production Company:

Qisheng Yishi (Haikou) Pictures Co., Ltd.

About the Director

About the Screenwriter

Xu Zhiyong: currently Vice President of CMC Pictures, with family roots in Quanzhou, Fujian. Xu previously worked at Bona Film Group and Media Asia Films, in charge of investment and development and of production and distribution of films and series. Xu has taken part in the development, production and distribution of more than 70 films, including The Battle at Lake Changjin, The Sea Meets the Steppe, The Bravest, Operation Red Sea, Operation Mekong, Project Gutenberg, A Simple Life, Our Time Will Come, The Founding of an Army, The Taking of Tiger Mountain, Flying Swords of Dragon Gate, the Overheard series and the From Vegas to Macau series, all of which did well at the box office and with critics. Zhao Xiaodan: graduated from the Department of Chinese at Shanxi University and the Department of Dramatic Literature at the Central Academy of Drama. At China Film Group, Zhao worked on visual effects and digital intermediate production for films including Red Cliff, Wheat, Reign of Assassins and Love for Life. Zhao was curator of the project market of the Beijing Film Market at the Beijing International Film Festival, focused on finding quality Chinese-language genre films and emerging young directors.

About the Producer

Zhao Xiaodan: graduated from the Department of Chinese at Shanxi University and the Department of Dramatic Literature at the Central Academy of Drama. At China Film Group, Zhao worked on visual effects and digital intermediate production for films including Red Cliff, Wheat, Reign of Assassins and Love for Life. Zhao was curator of the project market of the Beijing Film Market at the Beijing International Film Festival, focused on finding quality Chinese-language genre films and emerging young directors. In 2012, the film Forgive Me for Not Loving You in Time, written by Zhao, was selected for the 20th China Golden Rooster & Hundred Flowers Film Festival. In 2018, Zhao acquired the rights to The Demon Painter, a popular urban fantasy novel series from Taiwan, China, co-developed it with Mars Novel into a four-volume web novel that was adapted for iQIYI Comics and selected for the iQIYI Cangqiong Program, and worked on screenplay development and production for the web series City of Mountains and Seas in the Painting and the period fantasy film The Demon Painter: City of Mountains and Seas.

About the Production Company

Qisheng Yishi (Haikou) Pictures Co., Ltd.: founded in 2021, the company focuses on developing and producing quality films and series with market potential. Its core members have long worked in the development and production of Chinese-language commercial genre films, and the company aims to build an original film brand with both commercial and artistic value.

Logline

In a hot, humid small city in southern Fujian, strange fires break out before the Zhongyuan Pudu festival. Fire investigator Chen Zhongwei searches the ruins for the truth: is the killing behind them a natural disaster or a human act?