Young director Zhou Quan's directorial debut feature, End of Summer, about a 10-year-old boy's joys and sorrows in the waterside city of Shaoxing in Zhejiang province, will open across the Chinese mainland on Friday. (Photo provided to China Daily)
As the only child in his family in Shaoxing, the director, who was born in 1987, says he grew up with "the inherent yet unable-to-resist emotion of loneliness" like most Chinese youngsters of his generation, who were raised under China's family-planning policy.
"When the adults pin all their hopes on one child, it is natural to see him turn rebellious under the stress," Zhou says. "In my movie, I hope to explore the typical parent-child tension in Chinese families."
Zhou's loneliness was exacerbated when he was sent to a Melbourne middle school in 2005, embarking on a decadelong journey of studying abroad.
In his first year abroad, Zhou lived with a Chinese-Australian family and he was surrounded by schoolmates who were locals.
"No matter where I went, I was in a minority. I felt lonely and isolated," he says.
After graduating from the RMIT University in Australia, he went to the United States to study cinema at the American Film Institute, becoming the only Chinese student in the 28-member class studying film direction.
When he got the opportunity to shoot his first feature, he wanted to make it a bit personal, despite some investors wanting him to make a more commercial film.
"I graduated from the AFI near the end of 2013 and began to write the script in early 2014. I then polished the story for around a year."
