Jet Lag

Anfang 2020 strandet die Regisseurin auf ihrem Weg nach China unfreiwillig in Graz. In der vom Virus hier wie dort erzwungenen Isolation denkt sie nach über ihren Urgroßvater, der 1940 nach Myanmar fuhr und nie zurückkehrte. Quarantänehotels, leere Straßen und Flughäfen führen tief hinein in diese frühere Reise, Zeitstränge verweben, verwirren sich um das alte Familiengeheimnis. Der Jetlag generiert eine wachtraumartige Zeitschleife, in die reale Gegenwart ebenso eindringt wie ferne Erinnerung. Verloren in Zeit und Raum reflektiert der filmische Bewusstseinsstrom die Abwesenheit der Väter, sucht essayistisch und poetisch nach Wurzeln und Identität. (Maria Marchetta)

Stranded in Austria at the beginning of the pandemic, the film starts with Zheng Lu Xinyuan’s trip back to China. Like a flashback from a recent past in which life seemed to be pure science fiction, we follow her through airports and quarantine hotels, isolation within isolation.
But in JET LAG, the past is not something distant or abstract, but rather something that someone has shaped into a story, one that is non-linear, as it depends on memory and digression, and has to be searched for, listened to, unveiled.
Her arduous trip back home suddenly blends into the memory of a trip to Myanmar to reveal a family mystery. As she moves through these tales, the film builds an idea of the present as another tale, one that we tell for those yet to come. Family intimacy is mixed with history: the early times of the pandemic, which seemed to have paralyzed everything but the inside – a life at home and with those closest to us – brought the promise of a time in which we could revise what life on earth had been so far. But Myanmar’s current history soon takes over and everything shifts again, as history usually does. (Lucía Salas)

Zheng Lu Xinyuan: DINNER (2012, K), RUNNING IN A SLEEPING RIVER (2016, K), 5’ FUNERAL IN THE RAIN (2016, K), NIU IN THE LAST DAY OF FALL (2017, K), SMOKERS DIE SLOWLY TOGETHER (2017, K), FEVERISH (2018, K), A WHITE BUTTERFLY ON A BUS (2018, K), THE CLOUD IN HER ROOM (2020), JUST LIKE ANY OTHER NIGHT (2021, K)