Plaudits rain down on Damp Season

Gao says he has started to conceive the story in March 2016, when the designer-turned filmmaker was struggling with a midlife crisis caused by a failure to launch his own business and family concerns.

"There was a time when I felt very depressed, and I was unwilling to go outside or meet any of my friends. But there is a voice deep from my heart telling me to walk out of the shadow," recalls Gao.

To ward off anxiety and regain confidence, Gao started jogging and studying fishing with an expert, who brought him to a small lake in downtown Shenzhen.

"Every day I sat quietly by the lakeside and observed the vast empty area surrounded by skyscrapers. It gave me an unrealistic and magical sense," says Gao.

Driven by an illusion that imagined the sky had been transformed into a transparent glass tank, Gao says he felt himself like a fish that was trapped, crashing onto the walls of the tank over and over but unable to escape.

The lake was used as a major location in Damp Season, which also features several close-up scenes of dying fish, as a metaphor to project Gao's own confusion and depression, as well as his pondering over those who are struggling to live a decent life in a metropolis.

Gao recruited his cast, with the two leading performers-both born in the 1990s-selected from more than 600 candidates.

Interestingly, Gao used a strategy which he describes as a bit "mean and shrewd" to train the two performers for two months, in order to get them completely immersed into the characters' world.

"They played a couple of lovers who turn to feel disgust toward each other. I want such an emotion to come out naturally, instead of being performed," Gao explains. "And I also tried to make the performers dislike me, which could help to build a ghastly atmosphere for the movie."

Actress Chen Xuanyu, a native from Northeast China's Jilin province where the weather is dry in most time of the year, was asked to live in a humid shabby apartment with swarms of mosquitoes buzzing at night.

As a trick, Gao told the actress the crew couldn't afford a decent hotel, and also couldn't buy her necessary mosquito prevention facilities-like a mosquito net tent and repellent incense-as she needed to get used to the harsh environment her role demanded.

"After a week, she came to my house, sobbing and showing me the swollen mosquito bites on her legs. She complained that she could only sleep less than two hours every night," says Gao.

"With such negative emotions accumulated, the actors' feeling of disgust toward me and each other mounted to the peak, and it was the right time to start shooting."

Gao says he felt sorry about "torturing" his major cast members, but he is glad to see their effort paid off.

When the film was shown at the global premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam 2020 in the Netherlands in late January, it received rapturous applause.

"Damp Season held four screenings during the festival. I went to all of them as I wanted to sit with locals to hear their views," recalls Gao.

One of the most impressive moments was when a French producer told him the film reminded him of the Romanian-born dramatist Eugene Ionesco's stage play The Rhinoceros, a classic of the theater of the absurd.

In Damp Season, Gao shot some unrealistic scenes to explore the absurd side of life.

For instance, after experiencing a series of failures in real life, the protagonist had an illusion, "seeing" he could fly above the ground while wrapped up in the opera costume of the Monkey King.

A graduate of fine arts, Gao, 48, started his career as a brand designer, getting established in some renowned projects, such as designing the emblem of the 26th Summer Universiade in Shenzhen in 2011.

But it was Gao's directorial documentary, Paigu (which refers to the nickname of a pirate DVD vendor), that shifted his interest to filmmaking. The documentary is about the titular unlikely vendor, who, though poorly educated, has a distinctive passion for arthouse films.

Speaking about the future, Gao says he will focus on filmmaking.

"The quarantine days for COVID-19 prevention has its positive side. It was a rare time for most filmmakers to stay at home, spending more time reading books, watching films and writing their new stories. I believe the pandemic crisis could become a turning point for Chinese film industry, which may bring more quality works," he says.