Kogonada’s ‘Zi’ Lands at Parallax Films for International Sales (EXCLUSIVE)

“Zi,” the latest film from director 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 distinctive voices.

Shot over three weeks on the streets of Hong Kong, “Zi” stars Michelle Mao, Haley Lu Richardson and Jin Ha as three wandering souls caught in a night that ripples across time. The film follows a young woman who, visited by visions of her future self, encounters a stranger whose appearance reshapes the course of her evening – and possibly her life. Kogonada, who also wrote and edited the film, built the project around Hong Kong’s particular relationship with memory and movement, taking three days to identify a geography the team could navigate largely on foot.

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Production was structured along radically independent lines. The seven core collaborators – Kogonada, producer Chung An, producer Christopher Radcliff, producer-cinematographer Benjamin Loeb, and actor-producers Richardson, Mao and Jin Ha – collectively owned the project, splitting responsibilities and working without outside financing. The script evolved day by day on location, with scenes sometimes conceived in the moment, and the team held themselves to a discipline of one take per day.

“Zi” drew strong notices at its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year and subsequently screened at MoMI’s First Look Film Festival in New York. 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 U.S. and Hong Kong, shot in English, Cantonese and Mandarin on a combination of digital and 16mm. The film is dedicated to the late composer Sakamoto Ryuichi, whose experimental late-period music Kogonada drew on throughout the project.