Li Cheng
Directing
Biography
Li Cheng is a writer, director, and producer who is originally from China. Cheng left biotechnology research in 2007 to focus on film, and his first feature, Joshua Tree (2014) is on the crisis of the American Dream – a critique of US American culture. His second feature, José (2018) premiered at the 75th Venice Film Festival on 6 September 2018 and was awarded Queer Lion the following day – for the project he conducted research in 12 Latin American countries and lived in Guatemala for two years: a struggling place yet filled with youthful hope. Cheng holds a PhD from Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA.
Known For
The epic adventures of China’s golden snub-nosed monkeys, Tibetan antelope and Asian elephants, told across the seasons in a diversity of habitats.
China's Wild Empire
José lives with his mother in Guatemala: a tough life in one of the world's most dangerous, religious, and impoverished countries. José is her youngest and favorite child, and her life is going to church and selling sandwiches. He spends his days on crowded buses and in the streets delivering food. Resigned and aloof, in free moments he plays with his phone and looks for random sex. When he meets Luis, José is thrust into a dimension of passion and pain and self-reflection that was previously unimaginable.
José
Set in the USA heartland following the 2008 economic collapse, a recently divorced suburban mother of two young girls struggles to hold onto the American dream.