Tu Nan | Lu Wei
Award-Winning Filmmaker
Best Art Direction
Art Direction, Legend of the Demon Cat
Jury Citation
The jury found that the art direction of Legend of the Demon Cat conveys the spirit of classical Chinese painting and a traditional aesthetic mood. Using practical sets, the team spent six years building a Tang city at its height, recreating the Tang landscape down to every plant, tree and building. With strong creativity, the art directors handled subtle colour relationships through contrasts of warm and cool, giving the visual rhythm and layering a sense of cadence and constructing a period dreamscape with an Eastern character.
Legend of the Demon Cat: Synopsis
The story takes place in Chang'an at the height of the Tang dynasty. Bai Letian (Huang Xuan), once a senior court official, willingly accepts demotion to court diarist so that he can gather material for his poetry. A series of strange deaths occurs in Chang'an, and even the emperor dies mysteriously; all of it is linked to an elusive demon cat. The Japanese monk Kukai (Shota Sometani), who has crossed the sea to lift a curse on the emperor, finds a kindred spirit in Bai Letian, and the two resolve to uncover the truth together. A plaintive poem, "Qing Ping Diao", reveals that the demon cat's haunting is closely tied to the death, thirty years earlier, of the peerless beauty Consort Yang (Sandrine Pinna). Following the diary left by Abe no Nakamaro (Hiroshi Abe), who had once been infatuated with Consort Yang, Bai Letian and Kukai witness the former glory of the Tang and expose a conspiracy hidden for decades.