Posted on 01/23/2026 12:29:13 PM PST by sphinx
The film, which follows a young Hong Kong woman (Michelle Mao) who spends a night traversing the city with two new acquaintances (Jin Ha and Haley Lu Richardson) as she tries to make sense of dangerous visions of her future, was a true collaboration between Kogonada and six of his best friends....
He asked the three actors, longtime cinematographer Benjamin Loeb, and producers Christopher Radcliff and Chung An to meet him in Hong Kong with little more than a faint idea for a movie. They started shooting almost immediately, figuring out the film as they went along....
“These are six of my favorite people,” Kogonada said. “The invitation was, ‘Hey, let’s all meet in Hong Kong, we all have to pay for ourselves. Let’s just meet there and let’s create something together and let’s do it for a few weeks.'”
(Excerpt) Read more at indiewire.com ...
The big studios are in a death spiral. The question is what will replace them. This looks interesting -- and for reasons that are quite independent of whether you like this thematically or narratively. It's said to be micro-budgeted. Per the story, the entire team -- a total of seven people, including all three actors -- paid their own way. They went to Hong Kong (why there, I don't know), hung out for three weeks, and made a movie. The world premiere is tomorrow night, and it is now seeking distribution.
For those who keep track of such things: this ain't a Hollywood movie, but it IS a pure American indie bootstrap project. Five of the seven people involved are American (two of them first generation immigrants from Korea, having come here with their parents as children). I don't know about Michelle Mao, and I gather from the story that Chung An was born in Hong Kong but I don't know more about him.
Zi was shot guerilla style: no sets, no sound stages, no artificial lighting, using found spaces and ambient lighting. I don't know if they pulled permits for anything; Hong Kong now being a fiefdom of the God King Emperor Zi, I suppose tipping off the Gestapo would be a good thing to do, but that could be interesting. Nor do I know what kind of cameras they used, but presumably they were light and hand held. Some indie films have been shot on iPhones; I suspect they did a bit more here, but I don't know.
No word about cost, but I have an interest in very low budget films. Kogonada's first feature film, Columbus, was shot for $700,000, and the filmmakers partnered with Sundance on an experimental self-distribution experiment. I used to think that was pretty cool. Then I discovered Primer ($6,000, mostly spent on film) and Coherence ($30,000). There are other examples. I will be interested in knowing what Zi cost -- and if everyone paid their own way ....
Why would anyone sign on for this?
I'll just note that on EVERY Kogonada project, EVERY actor speaks in admiring and enthusiastic terms about what a decent, thoughtful and insightful collaborator he is. Yes, movie people make happy talk on the red carpet. But the praise for Kogonada, to my ears, goes beyond that. In this case, the other six people involved have all worked with him in the past, several of them going back a long way. And they paid their own way to work with him again. Kogonada seems to be one of the good guys still fighting the good fight against studio rot.
This was shot in total secrecy. No one outside the small team and the Sundance people even knew it existed until Sundance announced it as a selection. As far as I know, there have been no test screenings. (Those cost money.) The world premier is tomorrow night at 8:45 p.m.
Is it any good? There are two reasons to hope it may be: the track records of the people involved, and the fact that a major festival selected it. Like other festivals, Sundance's selections aren't any kind of gold standard (I spotted five among this year's selections that I know I'll watch), but at least a group of professional film people have watched it and thought it had enough merit to make the cut. Beyond that, we'll start to hear more tomorrow night. Sundance has kept a hybrid model since covid, with some selections available online starting on January 29. I got an online ticket, so freepmail me if you are curious.
The big studios have tentpole disease, too many layers of corporate bureaucracy fouling the process, too many people dipping at the till. They're trapped in a high cost model that systematically saps creativity and quality. This is a deliberate leap to the other extreme.
I've recommended Nouvelle Vague to the movie ping list as an underseen gem of 2025. That is Richard Linklater's homage to Jean Luc Godard, one of the key figures of the French New Wave. It's about Godard making his first feature film in 1959, in which he set out to break as many rules as he could and improvise his way to a movie. Richard Linklater didn't shoot Nouvelle Vague that way; he had worked on it for 15 years, and the whole thing is meticulously planned and formally shot (in black and white, in French, and on the streets, not on sound stages). But Nouvelle Vague sets out to recapture the anarchic, free spirited rebelliousness of the young Godard, and IMHO, it does this beautifully. And it is a very funny movie if you shut down all the distractions and watch it closely; it's made for the theaters, not for doom scrolling, multi-tasking couch potatoes in the streaming audience. Kogonada has also mentioned Godard as one of his important influences, and he is taking that spirit to the limits.
I hope it's good. I hope it makes lots of money -- and given the micro-budget, "lots of money" doesn't have to be all that much to give the filmmakers a great success on their three week friends-making-a-movie jaunt to Hong Kong.
Let Hollywood crash and burn. Support #Resistance.
Movie ping list.
I spotted five films that interested me in the Sundance lineup, none of which I had heard of before Sundance listed them. Just another way to do a little scouting for good movies that aren’t big studio projects and therefore don’t get big promotional spends.
A lot of the good stuff today flies under the radar screen. Ya’ gotta start somewhere ....
You are correct. Titles?
The title of the movie is “Zi.”
Most people don’t realize that the original Alien and Terminator movies were low budget. I have a theory that the more $ a scifi move has budgeted, the worse it is. Compare Avatar with District9. Night and day quality. District9 totally owned Avatar that year.
Then there is the greatest action movie of all time. Commando. Also low budget.
On that note, the original Star Wars was considered low budget.
Ensemble style films used to be more common. A familiar group of creative and experienced people, getting together to form something new, something that didn’t depend on production, musical scores or CGI to tell the story.
All that polishing of the apple came later, if the idea ever took root.
It worked well for directors like Ingmar Bergman, Woody Allen, Adam Sandler and Tyler Perry.
No interest whatsoever, none.
Yes. I remember that now. Relatively small budget. Once again proving my theory.
Another decent little low budget scifi was Pitch Black. Then there was the excellent little time travel story, Primer. Less than one million budget. Time travel handled intelligently.
Hey ... whatever rings your chimes. I do try not to snark at other people’s genre preferences ....
How did you like it?
Kogonada’s first two films (Columbus, After Yang) are among my favorites, so I am interested in whatever he produces. Zi might be good, at least for those of us who like his style.
But the micro-budgeting thing also caught my interest. We spend a lot of time kvetching about the big studio/streaming doom loop, the bloated budgets, the lack of originality, the endless recycling of stale IP, etc.
Kogonada and six friends paying their own way to Hong Kong and collaborating on a project they were writing on the fly is about as polar an opposite as one can imagine.
I hope they made something good. It’ll be interesting to see if they get good distribution offers at Sundance. And I hope those will include a long theatrical window and a DVD/Blu-ray release.
We are watching for the film “Dead Man’s Wire” which I think is an independent film by Gus Van Sant.
Don’t know if it made the Sundance expo but it was just released last week.
We were aquainted with Tony Kiritsis, the main character in the true story, back in 1965.
He lived across the street from us in the trailer park that he managed.
Its a long story, but we were forced to move when I had a major disagreement with Tony about who we could have as guests in our home.
Our grandkids are impressed that Grandma and Grandpa were actually kicked out of a trailer park by Tony Kiritsis.
Thanks for the ping.
“lot of the good stuff today flies under the radar screen”
Clay and Buck agreed today that a good movie hasn’t been made in the last 20 years. I can’t Judge that but I know that millions of production dollars alone doesn’t make a good movie.
My favorite pastime now is reading books.
Primer was made for $6,000, and it’s more intelligently written than most of what Netflix produces for $20 million.
Zi has three actors, a director, a cinematographer and two producers; it’s Kogonada and six longtime collaborators — a friend group — plus an additional producer, born in Hong Kong (I don’t know where he hangs his hat now or how he knows Kogonada).
Micro-budgeted, shot in secret in three weeks, filmed guerilla style with no sets, sound stages, or lighting, all seven of the people involved paying their own way.
I haven’t seen any numbers, but this film might pay everyone back and turn a profit if it makes $50,000 at the box office. If it catches lightning in a bottle and makes high six figures or low seven figures, it will have a terrific ROI.
Or maybe it will be well received at Sundance and spark a bidding war from the streamers - though I’d rather see it get a long theatrical run, maybe drift around the arthouse circuit for a year, then get a physical media release, and then be licensed for the old fashioned way for very limited televised showings. And in a perfect world, Netflix would never get its hands on it for even a day. A lot becomes possible if producers retain control of their product and keep their costs down.
I don’t think I’ve ever listened to Clay and Buck. I checked their webpage but today’s show seems to be tucked behind a paywall. I disagree with them about good movies, but I’d be interested in whether they fleshed out their argument or were just venting.
A lot of people vent because they’ve aged out of going to the movies, settle for tv, and say “Hollywood hasn’t made any good movies in 20 years” simply because they’ve not darkened the door of a theater in 20 years and therefore haven’t seen any because they haven’t bothered to check anything out when it’s released.
Our target acquisition systems are broken. If people are content to wait until Netflix finally gets its hands on a good movie and spoon feeds it to them in the “just added” line on the landing page, of course they don’t see many (or any) good new movies.
They foul more than processes. And remember that no one would initially fund Robert Duvall's "The Apostle." a very problematic Southern Pentecostal minister but which movie did not engage in the typical negative portrayal of that or anything Christian.
Thanks for the recommendations. I do add freeper recommendations to my watchlist. That doesn’t mean I’ll get around to actually watching them, but I do keep track of them and mine the list from time to time if something sparks an interest.
You’ve identified the problem. There are good movies out there. Finding them in all the clutter is the problem. Kvetching about mediocre or objectively bad stuff is shooting fish in a barrel. We need to up our game when it comes to recommending the good stuff.
We can’t hope that the industry will make more of our kind of films if we don’t support the good ones when they come out. That’s why I tend to focus on new releases and upcoming projects that look interesting.
Festival selections are worth scanning because at least a group of professional movie people will have screened the films and thought the selections made the grade cinematically. That’s just a crude first cut, but it’s somewhere to start. Then I’ll read the brief writeup, watch a trailer, and read some reviews. If a festival announces 60 selections and I find four or five worth checking out, that’s not a bad return on a few minutes spent scouting.
I also look for the “best of” and “most overlooked” lists, especially from reviewers I’ve grown to trust. Letterboxd is a wonderful tool. If I really like a movie, I log it and read viewer comments and reviews. Some really stand out. From time to time, I find reviewers who consistently like the movies I like and have insightful things to say about them. Letterboxd makes it easy to follow those people and get a steady stream of leads from people on my wavelength.
The worst way to find good movies is to do a random search through the stuff a streamer serves up to you. The algorithms just feed you a steady stream similar to what you’ve been watching. That puts you in a curated silo, and of course it quickly becomes an endless parade of more of the same. The key is to get out of the silo.
In this case, two things caught my eye about Zi. First, I liked Columbus and After Yang, Kogonada’s first two films. When working with his own material, he is intensely philosophical in approach and meditative in style. He doesn’t lecture or dictate some dogma. He paints a picture, tells a story, and invites you to think. I like that kind of movie. They’re not to everyone’s taste, but I’m not going to quarrel with anyone’s genre preferences.
Secondly, I am intrigued by the news that there were only seven people involved in the production, and they all paid their own way to Hong Kong for the shoot. (I see now that an assistant cinematographer and a production assistant have been credited as well. I wonder if they were paid or are also on their own dime.)
Kogonada had a rough outline and no script, because he had invited friends he’s worked with in the past and both likes and respects, and he wanted a fully collaborative project. Friends making a movie on their own dime: no big studios, streaming networks, outside investors and swarms of producers and investors demanding changes.
Other filmmakers have done this sort of thing, though I’ve never heard of a team flying halfway around the world to do it. (Primer and Coherence were shot using borrowed spaces right at home.) I suppose it’s the norm in film school projects, where the students will eventually partner up and help each other get their projects done. Can this particular group pull off sonething worth watching? Maybe. They’ve all done some excellent work in the past. Now they’re bootstrapping their own thing.
What’s not to like? This kind of thing is much more interesting than Disney dumping another $250 million into another monumental pile of garbage, or Netflix grinding out another dozen mediocre cookie cutter clones of straight to television movies for the couch potato audience.
Zi is tagged as an experimental movie. Maybe it will disappear without a ripple. Or maybe it will catch lightning and find an audience.
Do you know more about the funding story for The Apostle?
Getting movies financed is a huge part of the puzzle. One of the things that interests me is when the “creatives” — the writers, directors and actors being the Big Three — get into producing and sometimes self-financing because they are serious about their craft, want to do good work, hope maybe to make something that rises to “Art” and has lasting value ... and get frustrated or even disgusted with the studio sludge factories. So they look for ways to roll up their sleeves and do it themselves.
Of course, it’s always important to note that the studio is not always wrong. The creatives can go off on some crazy tangents of their own. There are instances when the really legendary producer turned out to be the person with the vision and discipline to make something great. Some of the battles between writers, directors, actors and producers have been epic, and it’s not always just a matter of clashing egos.
Which is interesting. How did The Apostle finally get financed? Ultimately, a great movie gets made because the right person has the moxie and the standing to make the call in crunch time.
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