Introducing the new visual identity for Mulan

By tracing the history of our past main visuals and distilling and reconstructing their core motifs, we introduce our new visual identity.

I. The Eye: Seeing and the Gaze

The eye first appeared in the festival’s main visual in 2019, echoing the slogan “Seeing China, one film at a time.” In 2025, the eye returned, integrated into the image of Gullinkambi, the golden-combed rooster of Norse mythology. The recurring motif of the eye evokes a fundamental tension in the experience of cinema and visual art: the dynamic interplay between seeing and being seen, between the gaze and being subject to the gaze.

Cinema does more than present images for us to view; it also shapes the very conditions under which viewing takes place. Through images, we see the world, yet within them we also encounter the gaze of the Other. We may assume ourselves to be the subjects of our own looking, without fully recognizing how position, framing, and perspective shape the act of looking itself. Seeing, then, is not merely an act of perception, but an ongoing relation that is continually formed, adjusted, and reflected upon.

II. The Apple Box: Framing and the Void

In 2024, the festival’s fifth edition took Pò (破) as its theme. The character suggests destruction, collapse, and rupture, while also pointing to the possibility of breaking established orders and pushing beyond existing boundaries. It evokes, too, daybreak, when a new world begins to emerge.

An apple box, a familiar fixture on film sets, became the central motif of that year’s main visual: suspended in space, the box radiated light from within. On the cover of the festival’s programme book, the viewpoint moved closer to the opening at the top of the box. The light draws the viewer inward, yet peering inside may reveal only a dark void. Shifting to another vantage point, however—looking outward from within the box—the same opening becomes a passage through which the viewer can glimpse the boundless expanse of the cosmos.

This visual experience speaks to the uncertainty inherent in looking: what we see depends not only on the object before us, but also on where we stand in relation to it. A seemingly open entrance may lead to nothingness, while a seemingly closed boundary may, from another perspective, unfold into infinity. The apple box thus becomes more than a piece of filmmaking equipment, serving as a visual metaphor for concealment and revelation, limitation and transcendence.

III. The New Visual Identity: The Aperture and Reconstruction

The eye and the opening at the top of the apple box resonate with one another in both form and concept. Each takes the shape of a slit or fissure across the visual surface: establishing a boundary between interior and exterior while allowing the two to meet; restricting the field of vision while opening up new possibilities for seeing. Seeing and being seen, concealment and revelation, closure and openness converge at this aperture.

Through the fusion, distillation, and abstraction of the eye and the apple box’s top opening, the new visual identity emerges in a 16:9 aspect ratio. The conceptual threads embedded in the festival’s past main visuals are thus translated into a simple, striking form, marking a new starting point for Mulan’s visual identity system. This aperture carries our vision: to approach unfamiliar experiences within the confines of the frame, and to re-examine our own ways of seeing through encounters with the gaze of the Other. From a seemingly finite opening, we step forth into an infinite multiplicity of horizons.

Through this aperture, see cinema, see the world.