For Qiu Sheng, Father’s Day was especially momentous this year. The recent holiday marked the world premiere of his deeply personal second feature, My Father’s Son, a seven-years-in-the-making sci-fi exploration of the director’s real-life dad, who died when he was a teenager. An unusual mix of speculative sci-fi imagination and intimate family sentiment, the film is vying for top honors in the Shanghai International Film Festival‘s main competition this week.
Drawing heavily from Qiu’s biography, My Father’s Son centers on an 18-year-old protagonist, Qiao, who loses his voice while attempting to deliver the eulogy at his father’s funeral and flees in anguish. The narrative unfolds across past, present and future as Qiao grapples with his difficult late father’s legacy. In childhood flashbacks, his stern, secretive dad imparts a love of boxing; a decade later — now an engineer — Qiao tries to “resurrect” his father by coding an AI boxing simulator in the older man’s image. The result is a poignant drama that uses gentle, at times surreal, sci-fi touches to explore grief, memory and the enduring but ever-fraught bonds between father and son.
My Father’s Son also signals a promising direction for Chinese science fiction. While the country’s recent sci-fi hits — such as the blockbuster Wandering Earth franchise — lean toward big-budget spectacle in the Hollywood mold, Qiu’s film offers a quieter, more introspective approach. Its futuristic elements are rooted in everyday reality (the “AI father” remains a humble boxing partner) and imbued with distinctly Chinese cultural undercurrents. The story is set in Qiu’s hometown of Hangzhou, a city where ultra-modern skyscrapers glow above thousand-year-old canals, mirroring the film’s blend of technology with traditional values like filial piety.
Qiu first gained notice with his 2018 debut, Suburban Birds, a dreamy drama set in Hangzhou that bowed at Switzerland’s Locarno Film Festival. A later short, Double Helix, won Shanghai’s Golden Goblet Award for best live-action short, cementing Qiu as a talent to watch.
In a conversation with The Hollywood Reporter shortly after his new feature’s premiere, Qiu discussed the catharsis of confronting his dad through the filmmaking process, why he views artificial intelligence as the contemporary form of a “ghost” or ancestral spirit and the current hopes and anxieties of China’s young generation of directors.
How did My Father’s Son begin and how did it evolve? I understand it was partly inspired by the loss of your father in your youth?
When I was 15, I was in high school, and I had just finished an exam. Then I was notified by my teacher that my father had passed away the day before. I was taken to the funeral, and my family gave me a piece of paper with a eulogy written on it. They told me to read it aloud to everyone. But I was overwhelmed and lost my voice when I tried to read it. So I abruptly ran away. That became a very painful memory for me — and that’s exactly how My Father’s Son begins. I’ve always been thinking of making this experience into a film, but back then, I didn’t know how to end the story. He tries to run away from his father’s death — but then what?
Later, I think in 2020, I read a story about a Korean mother who resurrected her daughter through AI. She put on a VR headset and met her daughter in a virtual garden. That piece of news shocked me. I thought, yes, that’s how my story should go. So I started to write about the son trying to resurrect his father through AI.
How would you describe your approach to the sci-fi genre? In contrast to some of the big-budget Chinese sci-fi, which seems modeled after Hollywood blockbusters, your film feels like something very different — almost a new Chinese approach to the genre, more intimate and intertwined with traditional culture in a naturalistic way.
I was very much influenced by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, the Japanese director who did Pulse and Journey to the Shore. I love his way of portraying sci-fi elements in a very mundane, natural setting. In this film, I tried to do the same. The sci-fi elements grow out of real life. The AI father and the shining trees are all embodiments of our intimate desires and thoughts.
Another big inspiration is the city I live in — my hometown, Hangzhou. As you can see from the film, Hangzhou is a very strange mix. It has ancient elements, like the canals built a thousand years ago, and also very modern skyscrapers with digital projections that look like breathing animals. I tried to transfer that real-life experience into the film — to show the gap between the textures of my city and transform them into sci-fi.
Beyond your personal loss, much of the film seems to be about trying to understand one’s father and one’s relationship with him — to understand his lived experience while processing your own pain. Was that also personal for you, or more of an intellectual exercise?
Yes, it was like therapy. First, to know my father through memory. I tried to organize those memories and piece together who he was and what he experienced. Then I found something else, and it became more intellectual. I found the thread of boxing as a metaphor. I found archival boxing footage from 1894 by Edison Studios — this is at the beginning of my film — and I watched many boxing matches to see how violence is portrayed. Then I looked at video games like Street Fighter and VR boxing. Boxing is very VR-friendly — because you only need to see your opponent and your two fists in front of you. Every VR headset seems to have a boxing experience. So I used these images to show how violence evolves: from early film to video games to VR. And I thought maybe it’s time to stop this escalation — to put an end to it. That’s how the film developed.
Boxing also seems like a good metaphor for the father-son relationship in the film, too — brutal, but also about discipline, distilling self-betterment and maybe even intimacy. Did you think of it that way?
Yes, very much. Boxing is brutal but also quite intimate. Often, boxers fight for two minutes, but then they hug for one minute. There’s this interesting mix. For example, in the scene where the father trains his son with bare fists, while the son is sitting by the window — it felt almost like they were dancing. Through boxing, they were creating intimacy, coherence. They were understanding each other’s tempo and becoming more intimate in a way they never normally could in their everyday dynamic.
The potential role AI might play in memory, grief and personal relationships is also very central to the film. The film seemed a little ambiguous about whether that’s ultimately good or bad. What do you think?
I’ve come to think that AI is the contemporary form of a ghost. It has no body. It has no age. It knows all of human history and knowledge. You could even see it as a contemporary form of ancestor worship, which is an important element of Chinese culture. When you talk to AI, you’re talking to a ghost. Sometimes it fills holes in our emotions and memories — it can be a comfort when we’ve lost someone. But ultimately, it’s like talking to a mirror. If you’re sad, you’re talking to your sadness. If you’re happy, you’re talking to your happiness. The protagonist realizes this in the end — so he gives up the AI and throws it away.
I noticed that water is a recurring motif. It rains often, the canals are a constant presence, and the characters occassionally suddenly go swimming — sometimes fully clothed. The father eventually drowns himself. What were you doing symbolically with water?
First, that comes from the character of Hangzhou itself — a city full of water. The canal is connected to the lake, and the lake is connected to streams, which ultimately connect to the sea. It’s also related to my family’s history. As the father says in the film, my grandparents migrated through the canal and stopped in Hangzhou to make thier life. So I was using water to connect the past, present and future. Water is also a metaphor for birth and death. We are all born in water — and when we are born, we know how to swim, but later we forget. In the film, the father dies in the water — maybe hallucinating that he’s returning to birth.
The film also has a distinct three-part structure — spanning the past, something like the present, and then the future. Each part has its own look and feel. Can you talk about how you approached the visual style for each?
For the past, we used mainly medium shots. We were quite close to the characters, documenting their behavior. The colors were more vibrant — like memories. For the second part, we used longer takes to follow the character through the city, to show his anxiety and inability to find rest in a busy city. For the third part, the colors were cooler, and we used wider angles to show how people are alienated in this future time.
You studied neuroscience before pivoting and becoming a filmmaker. I’m going to ask you the big question that everyone is pondering and podcasting about lately: With your past background in hard science, and your present career as an artist, how do you view the promise and potential peril that AI presents to various facets of life?
Well, it’s a very interesting topic. Everyone says AI is dangerous, that it will replace humans — as if evolution goes from monkey to man to AI. But I don’t think that’s the case. As I said, I think AI is more like a ghost — or a virus. It doesn’t need our streets or cafes; it takes over virtual, mental and even spiritual spaces. I think we’ll coexist with AI for a long time. We will continue to existing in our spaces, and AI will exist in its virtual one — maybe we will even need to interact with the virtual world less, with AI’s help, which could be quite nice.
Right now, AI-generated content, or AIGC, is becoming more and more popular in China. But I don’t like most of it. Many artists just use it to mimic past human works. But I think AI can be better used to create surreal results. Some of these experiments remind me of the early films of Méliès. Maybe using AI can help us find a path back to the birth of cinema — imaginary, imaginative cinema. I’m trying to experiment with that myself — I’d like to maybe make a surrealist AI film.
You’ve talked about your own interest in sci-fi and your influences. Are you comfortable talking about the broader potential for sci-fi in Chinese cinema? Around the time of The Wandering Earth, there was a tremendous amount of excitement and interest in the genre, but since then Chinese sci-fi has been uneven, perhaps even fizzled. What do you hope to see for the genre in your industry?
Well, I think the sci-fi genre has been defined by American films in the ’70s and ’80s, which were very optimistic about the future. The Wandering Earth succeeded because it touched something deep in Chinese audiences — a fear of losing something. But then Chinese sci-fi got stuck. Maybe it’s because we feel pessimistic about the future. If you show an autonomous car, we say it might cause accidents. If you show gene editing, we say it’s dangerous for our children. And maybe these things are true — but there isn’t the optimism. I’m not sure how the genre will evolve in China. In my film, I’m trying to explore how we might use AI to resurrect a loved one and find comfort. But I’m still a bit pessimistic, like many of my generation. Maybe when we find a way to become more optimistic again, sci-fi in China will rise.
Your film premiered on Father’s Day. What kind of response did you get? How have people — especially sons — been reacting to the film’s portrayal of the cross-generational father-son relationship?
After the premiere, we received polarized reviews. Some were very excited. Some said they saw a new way to interact with their father. One person said they texted or called their father for the first time in a long while. But others said they couldn’t find a personal way into the film. They could observe the father-son relationship, but they couldn’t connect to it themselves.
What is the mood like in the Chinese industry right now? The Chinese box office ended 2024 in bad shape, but then there was the huge success of Nezha 2 to start the year — but there haven’t been any hits since, which seems to be stressing people out. Nonetheless, China continues to participate in film festivals around the world with exciting new work. Bi Gan’s Resurrections just won a special honor at Cannes. So, is it simply a mixed bag as always? What’s your generational cohort thinking and worrying about?
You hit the key points. Yes, we’re at a low point. After Nezha 2, the market has been cold. Summer has begun, but there aren’t signs of recovery yet. For young filmmakers, there was a time — after Bi Gan’s Kaili Blues in 2015 and before COVID — when young directors who wanted to do new things had a lot of opportunities. But over the past few years, even when Chinese films are selected by big festivals, they often don’t get released in China. That’s very discouraging. We’re all excited that Bi Gan’s film made it through and did well — but it’s worrying that he seems to be the only one.
You said earlier that making this film was like therapy. How do you feel now, and what did you learn about yourself and your father?
From the moment I had the concept to now, it’s been seven years. It was a hard process. But I think I really got to understand my father — through writing and directing, even if it’s a version of him that I have imagined. I also learned more about myself. Before, I was too caught up in grief — missing him too much. But it wasn’t equal. The more I gave to it, the more empty I felt. It was like putting emotion into a void. At one point during editing, I decided to stop — to put down the glasses and let him go. My life had been too taken by grief. Since then, I have felt much better.
