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Online Gaming Drives the Search for a Missing Roommate in Dong Jie’s Venice Critics’ Week Debut ‘Zoom In, Zoom Out,’ Clip Unveiled (EXCLUSIVE)
Chinese director Dong Jie's debut feature "Zoom In, Zoom Out" will premiere at the Venice Critics' Week, with Variety exclusively unveiling a clip from the film. The story follows Shi, a young game designer, as he searches for his missing roommate Gao, a quest that draws him closer to Gao's girlfriend YY as the pair piece together fragments of Gao's life through chat logs, an in-game avatar and other digital traces. Dong says he is less interested in the mechanics of the disappearance than in what it exposes about human connection, jealousy and self-absorption in an age of constant online contact.
The film stars Sun Yang and Zhao Tian'ai and was produced by Cao Shanshan of Do Something Films, with cinematography by Li Zhong, editing by Qin Yanan and a score by Hank Lee. It marks the feature debut of Dong, a Shanghai native and Beijing Film Academy graduate who previously edited "Summer Blur" and "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" and whose thesis short "Break" screened at Pingyao and the Beijing International Short Film Festival. Notably, the production built its own functional video game for the film rather than using visual effects, a choice Dong says lent the missing character's avatar a rougher, more human quality that helped convey the emotion invested by the person behind the controls.
In short
- Dong Jie's debut "Zoom In, Zoom Out" premieres at Venice Critics' Week
- Film follows a search for a missing roommate via digital and gaming traces
- Production built a real in-house game instead of using VFX
Explained simply
Chinese cinema has produced a steady stream of new directorial talents making their mark at international festivals, and this year that spotlight falls on Dong Jie, a Shanghai-born, Beijing Film Academy-trained filmmaker who has until now worked as an editor on other people's films. His debut feature, developed for Venice's Critics' Week strand (a section dedicated to first-time directors), centres on a young game designer trying to trace what happened to his missing flatmate.
The plot unfolds largely through digital fragments: chat histories, a video game avatar and other online traces left behind by the missing man, which the protagonist pieces together alongside the missing man's girlfriend. Rather than a straightforward mystery, the director has said the film is more concerned with what this search reveals about jealousy, loneliness and self-absorption in a world where people are constantly connected online yet often disconnected from each other.
One notable production detail is that the filmmakers built a real, working video game for the story instead of relying on computer-generated effects, a decision intended to make the missing character's digital presence feel more authentically human. Venice's Critics' Week is a respected launchpad for new directors, so this premiere marks an early and closely watched step in Dong's transition from editor to feature filmmaker.
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