
Lam Can-zhao
Directing
Biography
Lam Can-zhao is a Chinese filmmaker born in 1994. His short film A Bright Sunny Day was selected for LA CINEF at the 76th Cannes Film Festival. In 2024, A Summer’s End Poem won Best Short Film at 74th Berlinale Generation Kplus and qualified for the 98th Academy Awards. To date, his films have screened at hundreds of international film festivals, including the Shanghai International Film Festival, Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, Visions du Réel, Raindance Film Festival, Hawaii International Film Festival, Jeonju International Film Festival, Valencia International Film Festival, Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur, and the Sarajevo Film Festival.
Known For

Set after the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong, Huang moves to Taipei but becomes ensnared in quarantine and grapples with the loss of liberty. Meanwhile, Kim's pursuit of happiness leads her into a mess of forbidden love.
Next Stop, Somewhere

Director Lam Can-Zhao leads a small film crew as they shoot a film about a stray dog in the streets of Guangzhou, leading viewers into an unpredictable, peculiar and incredible journey.
The Dog

The appearance of a girl on a bright sunny day gently changes the life of a young man.
A Bright Sunny Day

In a remote mining village plagued by nightly blackouts, Tia, a teenage girl, expresses herself through Michael Jackson’s dance moves on TikTok—her only outlet in a world defined by restriction. When Wynne, a city woman, becomes her stepmother, their lives begin to intertwine in unexpected and fragile ways.
Showtime

In "Where the Sun Shines Bright", an 18-year-old boy facing the uncertainty of adulthood finds his own story reflected in the lives of four children in the same village – parallel journeys of left-behind childhood shaped by resilience and the fragile brightness of growing up.
Where the Sun Shines Bright
The lives of two marginalized women – a Chinese van driver and a Vietnamese masseuse – briefly intersect in a remote town in Southern China.
The Numbered Women

Shortly before the end of the summer holidays, a country boy spends his savings on his dream of a city hairstyle – with surprising results. A story about bidding farewell to childhood and the poetic end of a summer.
A Summer’s End Poem

In the spring of 2017, after finishing the documentary Animal World, the independent filmmaker Ouyang Dong turned his camera to a foreign woman, Mary, played by an inflatable doll who was nearly drowned. However, in the process of filming Mary, Ouyang Dong ran into various difficulties. Moments of anger and helpless, he left the hospital with Marry. In the meantime, the police have spread their net very widely. A surprising climax awaits Ouyang Dong... The film was infiltrated with some dry humor in a plain way of narration, which certainly will catch the audience eyes on Chinese independent filmmaker from a peculiar angle.
Animal World

A tiger's escape shatters the long silence between a father and his son, with suppressed love shining through the crack.
When The Tiger Roars

Over the past eight years, a retired worker transformed herself into a female virtues guru, and she has influenced thousands of women in China. Why is the training of women's morality so popular in the Age of Feminism and Gender Equality? This documentary explores long-standing societal ideas around women, marriage and family that reflect traditions and expectations not only in China, but also around the world.