The latest film Zi, directed by Kogonada, has been picked up by Parallax Films for international sales outside North America, it was revealed on the sidelines of the Shanghai International Film Festival. The Hong Kong-set feature follows Columbus and After Yang from one of contemporary American independent cinema’s most distinct voices.
Kogonada has built a strong reputation within independent cinema through visually distinctive and emotionally reflective storytelling. His previous films, Columbus and After Yang, earned critical acclaim for their meditative approach to themes of memory, identity, and human connection. With Zi, the filmmaker appears to continue exploring similar ideas while shifting the setting to contemporary Hong Kong.
Zi was shot over three weeks on the streets of Hong Kong. The film stars Michelle Mao as Zi, Haley Lu Richardson as Elle, and Jin Ha as Min, three wandering souls who become connected during a night that ripples across time.
The film’s plot follows a young woman who is visited by a vision of her future self and encounters a stranger whose appearance reshapes the course of her evening, or possibly her life. Kogonada, who also wrote and edited the film, built the project around Hong Kong’s particular relationship with memory and movement. It was shot guerrilla-style on the streets of Hong Kong, with the team spending three days identifying a geography they could largely navigate on foot.
The project also marks an ambitious creative undertaking for Kogonada and his collaborators. Shot entirely on location in Hong Kong, the film embraces an intimate production style that reflects the spontaneity and energy of the city itself. The decision to work independently and without outside financing further highlights the personal nature of the project.
The production was structured along radically independent lines. The core collaborators on the project — Kogonada, producer Chung An, producer Christopher Radcliff, producer-cinematographer Benjamin Loeb, and actor-producers Haley Lu Richardson, Michelle Mao, and Jin Ha — collectively owned the project. They shared responsibilities and completed the film without outside financing.
The script continued to evolve during production, with some scenes developed in the moment while filming. The team also maintained a disciplined approach, often limiting themselves to a single take for each setup. Following its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, Zi attracted considerable attention and later screened at MoMI’s First Look Film Festival in New York. The film’s festival journey has already helped raise its profile among international audiences and buyers. Its selection at Sundance introduced the project to the global festival circuit, while its subsequent screening at New York’s First Look Film Festival continued to build interest around Kogonada’s latest work ahead of its wider international rollout.
Reviewing the film for Variety, Guy Lodge wrote: “‘Zi’ thrums with the oceanic rush of traffic, the patter and chatter of pedestrians, the delicate assertions of nature and weather against a wall of man-made noise, all jostling for our ears’ attention with Kogonada’s typically elegant musical selections.”
Zi is a co-production between the United States and Hong Kong. The film was shot in English, Cantonese, and Mandarin using a combination of digital and 16mm formats.
The film is dedicated to the late Japanese composer, pianist, and Oscar-winning film scorer Ryuichi Sakamoto, whose experimental late-period music Kogonada drew upon throughout the making of the project.
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