Mel Sangyi Zhao
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Read Interviews With the Fifth Annual Student Short Film Showcase Winners, Awarded By The Gotham, JetBlue and Focus Features
A creepy humanoid inches closer with every blink. A young woman returns to Peru to fulfill her grandmother’s dying wish. A nine-year-old boy attempts to hide the beloved cows his grandfather must separate. A despondent man attempts to end his life to no avail. An older woman navigates ageism and desire in China. These are the varied premises of the five winners of the fifth annual Student Short Film Showcase, co-presented by JetBlue, Focus Features and The Gotham, Filmmaker‘s publisher. The five winning filmmakers are, respectively, James Ross (Don’t Blink, Florida State University), Sisa Quispe (Urpi: Her Last Wish, City […]
by Natalia Keogan on May 7, 2025 -
“We Have More in Common Than We Think”: Mel Sangyi Zhao on Her Student Short Film Showcase Winner Return to Youth
For her California Institute of the Arts MFA thesis film, Mel Sangyi Zhao decided to travel back to her Chinese hometown of Chengdu and cast her mother in the lead role. The resultant film, Return to Youth, follows a retired dancer as she navigates the pressures of misogyny, ageism and a budding romance with a man several decades her junior. Recently pitched with the prospect of undergoing a vaginal rejuvenation surgery, the elegant Bing (Xiaobing Zhao) laughs off the procedure as preposterous. Only when her cohort of friends begin to seriously discuss their interest does she understand that she, too, […]
by Natalia Keogan on May 7, 2025 -
The Gotham Pages: Mel Sangyi Zhao is Creating Space for More Complex Women Characters
Cinema often shrinks from women’s middle age, a site it seems to find either innately unglamorous or melancholy. Middle-aged women are frequently relegated to supporting figures, particularly in tales of girlhood, but there exist so few accounts of their lives on screen. For this reason (and so many intersecting others), women are primed to dread middle age, for few truly know what to expect of it. Return to Youth, the daring short from ascendant filmmaker and Gotham EDU alum Mel Sangyi Zhao, places itself squarely in this long untapped cinematic space. Perhaps unsurprisingly, women directors generally seem more inclined to […]
by Kelli Weston on Jun 27, 2024
