Beginning in 2021, the New York-based Chinese filmmaker Shuli Huang began capturing moments from his post-college life in Beijing on a Super 8 camera. ‘We all just left school, and we are all lost,’ he says, narrating over footage of artist friends and their shared years in flux. Among those featured in these clips is his longterm boyfriend, Hong Yi, who’s about to leave for Europe, prompting Huang to return to his hometown.
It’s there that Huang’s acclaimed short film Will You Look At Me finds its focus, as he and his mother clash over their values and especially his homosexuality, something his mother learned about a decade ago, but which has simmered under the surface of their relationship unspoken ever since. Building his film around a series of intimate, often raw conversations, Huang attempts to bridge the cultural and generational divides between them. The result is deeply affecting, as two powerful forces – social pressures and motherly love – collide in revealing and often heartbreaking ways during Huang’s search for acceptance.