For ten days, in a city in the far west of China, a young Chinese actor and a Belgian filmmaker embark on a relationship that blurs the line between fictional performance and documented reality. The protagonists, played by Jin Jing and Matthias Delvaux, go on a hunt for intimacy in a city that is unfamiliar to them both

Hangzhou-based director Xinyuan Zheng Lu presents A White Butterfly on a Bus like a fragmented memory. The audience are only invited to witness partial events from the characters’ lives and form a narrative from Zheng Lu’s use of static, observational shots and suffocating handheld close-ups.

The up-and-coming director made this project as part of First International Film Festival’s Training Camp program, which is designed to cultivate a new generation of directors.

A White Butterfly on a Bus was screened at Beijing International Short Film Festival and First International Film Festival Xining in 2018. Aside from film, Zheng Lu has experimented in other art forms that explore the boundaries of visual media.

A White Butterfly on a Bus is part of China Wave, our month-long special program of films profiling a new era of Chinese creative expression that is rewriting the rules on conventional art, filmmaking, music and performance