Winners of the 2025 Fountainhead Programme Announced
On the Closing Night of the 2025 Mulan International Film Festival, August 17, the stage was lit with revelation: the Jury of the Fountainhead Programme, joined by our Artistic Director SHEN Wei, unveiled the two winning works of this year’s competition.
- Award for Excellence in Artistic Exploration (Cash award of $300): ZHENG Miaoxin, director of Farewell Taipei
- Jury Special Mention: Badlands Film Group (YANG Xiao, CHEN Sisi), directors of The Memo
- Audience Award (Cash award of $300): Badlands Film Group (YANG Xiao, CHEN Sisi), directors of The Memo
The three awards go directly to the winning directors.
Set up in 2022, the Audience Awards are voted by the attendees at the screenings of the Fountainhead Programme. The Award for Excellence in Artistic Exploration, replacing the Jury Prize for Best Short Film (set up in 2023) this year, recognizes boldness of vision and risk-taking in form.
The Jury of this year is comprised of Nicole CHI AMÉN (Costa Rican-born Chinese director, winner of our 2024 Best New Director award), Alvin LUONG (internationally-exhibited visual artist), and Annie SONG (award-winning film producer).
On behalf of the Jury, Annie SONG commented on the journey of being a Jury member: Serving as the Fountainhead Jury at the 2025 Mulan International Film Festival has been a journey of discovery and reflection. Across fifteen shorts, documentaries, and animations, we encountered filmmakers whose artistry stretched the boundaries of form and storytelling. We saw poetic realism, experimental structures, long-take immersion, and hybrid forms—always with a commitment to authenticity. Our discussion echoed the curiosity these films inspired, returning often to the emotional afterimages they left. Festivals like Mulan matter because they welcome risk, foster dialogue, and let stories—tender, fierce, or revolutionary—resonate far beyond their origins. It was a privilege to take part.
To the two films winning jury-selected awards, the Jury members offer their words of praise and encouragement.
Farewell Taipei
Nicole CHI AMÉN: There are stories that stay with us long after they are told. Beyond its seeming simplicity, lays the unfolding of the complex understanding of what it means to say goodbye. This film is filled with the energy of youth, the sadness of a departure and the joy of memory, love and friendship.
For its artistry, its honesty, its tender sense of storytelling and for reminding us of the enduring spirit of independent cinema, we are excited to present the Award for Excellence in Artistic Exploration to director ZHENG Miaoxin for Farewell Taipei.
Annie SONG: Farewell Taipei lingers with me for its tender, piercing portrait of the night before parting. Shot as a mockumentary, it feels disarmingly real—like overhearing private moments. The inspired choice for actors to also hold the camera strips filmmaking to its essentials, turning limitation into freedom and pure creativity. In its modest scale, the film speaks to anyone who has ever had to say goodbye.
Alvin LUONG: Farewell Taipei by ZHENG Miaoxin places the audience in an intimate space where we are deeply rooted to the perspective of the individual characters who also create the film themselves. We witness how a close-knit group of friends behave together and confide in private with each other as they approach an imminent rupture in friendship and love. The grief is felt yet cathartic by the end. The modest means by which the film was created is its strength that also emphasizes the great quality of the writing and editing of Farewell Taipei. Congratulations Miaoxin!
The Memo
Alvin LUONG: The Memo receives unanimous praise from the jury. We want to give a special mention to Badlands Film Group for their contribution to the festival and for the living memory of the pandemic. It is rare to encounter a documentary with such rigorous critique that is also articulated with formal innovations. Congratulations!
Nicole CHI AMÉN: Congratulations to the team behind The Memo! In their hands, a time of solitude and upheaval becomes more than memory: it becomes resistance. With courage, they bring into relation the intimate weight of their personal life in the pandemic with the tremors of civil and political unrest. Out of limited means, they conjure abundance, bringing together fragments that with great creativity become a reminder of why we tell stories at all: to make sense, to endure, and to go on.
Annie SONG: The Memo is more than a chronicle of Shanghai’s lockdown—it pushes back. The directors step into the frame, actively challenging the system; their interventions verge on performance art, making resistance part of the story. By turning constraint into possibility, The Memo affirms cinema as not just record but survival, reflection, and reinvention in confined spaces.
The Fountainhead Programme, established in 2019, celebrates and promotes emerging talents and their works with creative originality. Entries were collected via an open call for submission. They were then reviewed and selected by the Final Selection Committee.
The other titles in the 2025 Official Selection are: Innocent Flesh by LIN Yihan, Anatomy of a Call by Arnold TAM Jing Wah, Sudden Rain by WANG Yu & Jaro MINNE, Lagoon by QIU Runfeng, Orlo with Karma by Kangdrun, Perfect Blues by CHENG Yu, Retraction by FAN Wenyi, Lao Ma by LIN Kangjing, Life Is Snow by ZHANG Yaoyuan, 12 Moments Before the Flag-Raising Ceremony by QU Zhizheng, After All by LIU Chongyan, Poet by SUN Kun, and Local Elephants by JIN Chengyi.
