Chinese director Zhong Kaifeng presented his debut feature “Atlantic Rhapsody” at the Shanghai International Film Festival‘s main competition press conference and post-screening Q&A, joined by producers Wang Tianxiao and Zhengjing and cast members Li Xueqin, Wang Yitong, Yin Fang and Huang Miyi.
The film is set in a declining industrial city in Northeast China and traces a young man’s search for his father, a small-time schemer who chased quick riches during the freewheeling capitalist surge of the late 1990s and early 2000s in Southern China. Its loose, time-skipping narrative assembles fragments of memory across different eras.
Zhong drew the title from “Man from Atlantis,” an American TV series that appears in the film. “It carries a romantic imagination of people towards the unknown,” he said. “Naming a northeast Chinese story with the name of an ocean also draws a sense of dislocation that can dramatize the film.”
Sound design is central to how the film constructs its supernatural register. Zhong recalled a news story from the period depicted: “A supermarket had a live shark on display, but in an accident, a worker cooked it alive. The whole city went wild; people rushed to queue and buy bits of this cooked shark. It was a wild, chaotic vibe.” The sounds of ocean creatures, he said, amplified that uncanny quality. “This is a story about memory,” Zhong said. “If you want to involve a supernatural element, you need to find your ground with good sound design.”
