GU SHI

"GU SHI can be read as a mysterious family drama, but I am more interested in how the family dynamics function as a political allegory for our contemporary moment: when the past has been erased and the present hangs suspended, what becomes of the future? I hope to capture the experience of loss and disorientation that arises in isolation.

The film revolves around a buried family secret and the different ways each member confronts – or avoids – their past. Father distorts memory and resorts to violence to maintain control. Mother, weighed down by unspoken trauma, survives through silence. Daughter inherits only fragments of the past, drifting among half- remembered truths. Son, ignorant of what came before, becomes numbed by distraction and detachment. As their stories unravel, the film becomes a meditation on the fragility of memory and an attempt to confront the fear of forgetting in a time when collective amnesia feels increasingly widespread."