International Competition

Hidden Letters

Violet Du Feng
Screening time  
27.03. / Monday, 22:00 - 00:00 Theatre 1  
29.03. / Wednesday, 17:00 - 19:00 Theatre 5  

Spanning between past and present, from sunken rice fields and rural villages to bustling metropolitan cities, Hidden Letters follows two millennial Chinese women who are connected by their fascination with Nushu, a secret language that bonded generations of women in a clandestine support system of sisterhood, hope and survival. Hu Xin works as a Nushu museum guide and aspires to master the ancient script following the breakup of her marriage. In Shanghai, Simu is passionate about music and Nushu, but marital expectations threaten to end her pursuit of both. Influenced by Nushu’s legacy of female solidarity, the two women struggle to find balance as they forge their own paths in a patriarchal culture steeped in female subservience to men.

Violet_feng

Violet Du Feng

Violet is an Emmy winning independent documentarian and a 2018 Sundance Creative Producing Fellow. Her producing credits include Singing in the Wilderness, Confucian Dream, Maineland, and Please Remember Me. She directed the most recent PBS/CPB special program Harbor from the Holocaust, which had a national premiere in September 2020 with music performed by Yo-Yo Ma. She started her career as a co-producer on the critically acclaimed 2007 Sundance Special Jury winner, Peabody and Emmy winner Nanking, which was distributed theatrically around 30 countries throughout the world, and was the highest grossing documentary in China. Violet is the producer of the forthcoming films People’s Hospital, Dark Is Not Black and Running with the Prime Minister. Violet is a consulting programmer for Shanghai International Film Festival. Born in Shanghai, and based in New York, Violet holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism and received her MFA in journalism from University of California at Berkeley.

General sponsor

Hidden Letters

Germany, USA, China, Norway
2022, 89'

Directed by:
Violet Du Feng

Screenplay by:
Violet Du Feng, John Farbrother

Cinematography:
Feng Tiebing, Wei Gao

Edited by:
John Farbrother

Music:
Chad Cannon, Leona Lewis

Producers:
Violet Du Feng, Mette Cheng Munthe-Kaas, Jean Tsien, Su Kim, Tanja Georgieva-Waldhauer, Betsy Tsai

Produced by:
Fish and Bear Pictures, Ten Thousand Images, Independent Television Service (ITVS)

Festivals & Awards:

Tribeca (2022)