A paid embrace turns into refusal, and a queer love fairy walks into the woods in a blue wedding dress and a Dong silver crown.
Original title肉房子
Length5 minutes
CountriesChina / Scotland
FormatSuper 8
Film
An autofictional hybrid moving between a paid encounter, physical comedy and queer mythology. Zijian performs as Miss Pretty Good, a gay love fairy born from Dong folk imagination.
The film grew from Anything But Love and became an independent short: playful, abrasive and tender, with unstable exposure and the material limits of a Super 8 cartridge left visible.
Selected stills · Super 8
Anything But Love / 除了爱什么都可以
Feature hybrid documentary · In production
Anything But Love
A queer filmmaker in China restages lost love, buys touch and builds a digital companion to find one real moment.
Chinese title除了爱什么都可以
Length95 min / 52 min TV
LanguageMandarin / Dong
StageProduction
Three attempts
MemoryA breakup is restaged inside a Shanghai apartment.
TransactionPaid touch is traced through encounters filmed on Super 8.
CreationA digital husband is built from Zijian’s body, voice and Dong mythology.
Synopsis
Love has moved into private rooms, paid encounters, performance and fantasy. Intimate, absurd and sometimes humiliating, the film follows three attempts to approach it across the past, present and future.
Controlled reenactment gives way to unstable Super 8 exposure, then to unfinished game-engine textures, voice tests and failed digital bodies.
Recognition
IDFAcademy 2024 Berlinale Talents Doc Station Shortlist 2025 DOK Leipzig Co-Pro Market 2025 The Edinburgh Pitch 2026 · Industry Award
Stills · Shanghai, 2025
Jasmine’s Rabbit Hole / 贾思敏的兔子洞
Fiction feature · In development
Jasmine’s Rabbit Hole
Over one summer, a twelve-and-a-half-year-old girl learns to live in a changing body—until her skin begins to suggest another reality.
Chinese title贾思敏的兔子洞
Planned length95 minutes
LanguageMandarin
GenreComing-of-age / Fantasy
Synopsis
Jasmine, a twelve-and-a-half-year-old girl from China’s ethnic Korean community, spends a summer learning things no textbook can teach her: how to stop sweating, how to flirt, and how to love her family.
As her skin begins to change in bewildering ways, another reality seems possible. The ordinary discomforts of growing up open onto something stranger.
The film
The film inhabits the uncertain space between childhood and adolescence: wanting freedom while still needing care, longing to belong while feeling unlike everyone else.
Through coming-of-age fantasy and the unease of bodily transformation, it gives room to the small, private experiences that often go unseen—sweat after PE, a lunch with no one to sit beside, the embarrassment of a body that will not stay familiar.
Development images · Location explorations
Recognition & support
16th FIRST International Film Festival Financing Forum · Finalist, 2022
Shanghai Culture Development Foundation · Young Screenwriters Support Program, 2022
BIFF × Asian Film Academy · Pitch Workshop, 2023
Xie Jin Youth Film Support Program (China Film Association) · Top 10 Projects, 2023
10th Chongqing Youth Film Festival Financing Forum · Selected Project, 2023
5th HiShorts! Film Festival Financing Forum · Selected Project, 2023
Zijian Zeng · Xie Jin Young Director to Watch of the Year, 2023 谢晋年度关注青年导演
Project archive
FIRST · Project presentationXie Jin Youth Film Support Program · Selected projectsProject selection · 2023
Zijian_Zeng_Profile.jpg
Director · Writer · Producer
Zijian Zeng曾子健
Zijian Zeng is a Chinese filmmaker, screenwriter and producer based in Shanghai. A queer filmmaker from the Dong ethnic community, he works across fiction, documentary and autofiction, using reenactment, self-performance and constructed worlds to explore intimacy, memory and desire in contemporary China.
He studied Film Production and Producing at Beijing Film Academy, Ethnographic and Documentary Film at University College London, and Reportage Photography at Central Saint Martins. He was selected for the China Film Directors’ Guild Young Director Program and the Xie Jin Youth Film Support Program. His feature project Anything But Love was developed through IDFAcademy 2024, selected for DOK Leipzig Co-Pro Market 2025, and won the Industry Award at the Edinburgh Pitch 2026. I Hid in the House His Four Limbs Built is his latest Super 8 hybrid short.
Golden Rooster Cross-Strait, Hong Kong and Macao Youth Short Film Season nomination; Rhode Island International Film Festival; Oslo Short Film Festival; Sapporo International Short Film Festival.
Programs, markets & awards
The Edinburgh Pitch
Industry Award · Anything But Love
DOK Leipzig Co-Pro Market
Official selection · Anything But Love
Berlinale Talents Doc Station
Shortlist · Anything But Love
IDFAcademy
Alumnus · Anything But Love
Xie Jin Youth Film Support Program
Young Director to Watch of the Year · 谢晋年度关注青年导演
China Film Directors’ Guild Young Director Program
Project support
Jasmine’s Rabbit Hole
BIFF × Asian Film Academy Pitch Workshop Xie Jin Youth Film Support Program (China Film Association) · Top 10 Projects 10th Chongqing Youth Film Festival Financing Forum · Selected Project 5th HiShorts! Film Festival Financing Forum · Selected Project
Jasmine’s Rabbit Hole
16th FIRST International Film Festival Financing Forum · Finalist Shanghai Culture Development Foundation · Young Screenwriters Support Program
Water Under the Bridge
FIRST International Film Festival Financing Forum · Silk Road International Film Festival Financing Forum
