Ziqing “Gigi” Yang on When the Wind Blows: Building a World from Grief

In When the Wind Blows, filmmaker Ziqing “Gigi” Yang transforms grief into a strange and tactile science-fiction landscape. The film follows Birdy, an awkward amateur scientist whose fragile experiment pulls her into a dimension that feels both uncanny and intimately familiar. As she moves deeper into this inner world, she is forced to confront the loss she has kept buried for years.

Rather than presenting grief as a problem to be solved, Yang allows it to exist as sensation, memory, movement, and physical action. Birdy builds, searches, follows signals, and tries to communicate with something that may no longer be reachable. Her mourning is not graceful or easily articulated. It is clumsy, impulsive, and deeply human.

The film’s world is shaped by Yang’s attraction to abandoned spaces, corroded metals, rough textures, and the visual contradictions of Hong Kong, where past and present, East and West, continually collide. Working with designers Hana Lee and Cristina Lin, Yang incorporates wearable technology and experimental organic materials into Birdy’s wardrobe, turning costume and production design into extensions of the character’s emotional state.

When the Wind Blows received Best Hong Kong Film at the Hong Kong Arthouse Film Festival, alongside selections at the Bolton Film Festival and Cannes International Film Week 2027.

For Final Cut Magazine, Yang discusses the personal loss behind the film, balancing science fiction with emotional intimacy, creating under pressure, and why the story will continue through an interactive game.

Gigi, When the Wind Blows approaches grief through science fiction, awkwardness, and a kind of handmade ritual. How did the film begin?

I created the film during a period of depression, when I found myself returning to the grief of losing a close friend at fifteen.

I had buried that grief for years because, at the time, I was never really given the space to process it. As I grew older, that unspoken grief became entangled with a great deal of regret.

Around then, I watched Journey to the West by Kong Dashan and was deeply moved by the way he portrayed grief through awkwardness, humour, and emotional restraint. It felt incredibly familiar to me.

I am often quite clumsy in how I express emotion, even though I feel things very deeply. I think many Asian people can relate to that contradiction: caring intensely, but not always knowing how to communicate it directly.

Your director’s statement describes grief as something physical, rather than purely emotional. How did that idea shape Birdy and her experiment?

When the Wind Blows explores how unprocessed grief can shape us in ways we do not always recognise.

Grief is rarely linear. It can appear quiet on the surface while boiling and rumbling beneath the body. The worldbuilding in the film is shaped by that feeling: a nostalgic space imagined through absence, and the different realities in which we can feel suspended simultaneously while grieving.

I lost a childhood friend to suicide a decade ago. I was never able to grieve him properly, and for a long time I searched for an explanation or a sense of closure.

What surprised me most was how physical my grief needed to become. I felt compelled to do things—small, crafty, honestly quite foolish things—just to prove to myself that I was still making an effort.

Building the transmitter prop in the film, for example, felt like a way of communicating with him, as if the act itself could process guilt when language could not.

That impulse became the heart of Birdy. Her grief is not polished or profound. It is clumsy, amateur, and honestly human. She follows the wind’s signals as though they are directions coming from somewhere within her soul.

Her way of mourning may appear naive from the outside, but it remains an innocent space for her.

Visually, the film occupies a space between recognisable reality and something more dreamlike. How did you find the right balance?

I have always been drawn to science fiction and worlds that exist just outside reality.

I did not want the film to feel entirely realistic, but I also did not want it to become so surreal that the emotional core felt distant. I wanted to find a balance where the world felt strange and dreamlike, while the grief within it remained recognisable and human.

I imagined Birdy as someone childlike and confused, but also impulsive and unpredictable. Her emotional responses are not always logical or controlled, which was important to me because grief rarely is.

Tiana felt like the perfect person to play her. She was able to bring out Birdy’s vulnerability and innocence while still carrying that volatility and unpredictability.

Hong Kong’s textures and contradictions seem deeply embedded in the film’s design. How did your relationship with the city influence its visual language?

I have always been drawn to abandoned spaces and to rusty, metallic, rough textures, particularly coming from Hong Kong, where the past and present, East and West, collide and coexist.

That attraction naturally shaped the visual language of When the Wind Blows. I wanted the dimension Birdy enters to carry the weight of what remains—traces, memory, and longing—and for that longing to become the engine of the story.

Working with designers Hana Lee and Cristina Lin felt instinctive because their collections already existed within that emotional frequency.

Their pieces reveal Birdy’s inner mechanics: how she moves, protects herself, and transforms. The wardrobe incorporates wearable technology and experimental organic processes, helping us create looks that feel both futuristic and intimate.

The production encountered serious location problems. What happened, and how did the team adapt?

The locations were probably our biggest challenge.

We did not have the correct permit for one of the places where we had originally planned to shoot, so we were being rushed out and had to film everything very quickly.

Strangely, that pressure also made the experience much more exciting. We all felt incredibly passionate and young, with everyone willing to take risks and do whatever they could to bring the film to life.

Luckily, the team was able to move and think very quickly. Along the way, people even guided us towards alternative locations where we were less likely to be asked to leave.

In the end, those new locations worked even better than we could have imagined.

I think that is one of the most beautiful things about filmmaking: the small challenges and accidents that initially feel like problems can eventually become the most surprising and memorable parts of the film.

What aspect of the completed film gives you the greatest sense of pride?

I am particularly proud of the worldbuilding, and of how creatively and quickly we were able to respond whenever something changed.

Of course, the film was informed by many great filmmakers, images, and visual references that I had encountered over the years. But I am proud that I was able to properly digest those influences rather than simply imitate them, and transform them into a world that felt distinctly my own.

The aim was to translate something very internal and personal into a visual language while still leaving enough openness for the audience to enter the world and form their own emotional connection to it.

I wanted the film to feel specific to my imagination, but not so closed or self-contained that viewers could not find themselves within it.

Your introduction to filmmaking came through an unexpected route: K-pop music videos. How did that fascination develop into a filmmaking practice?

This might sound slightly embarrassing, but I actually first became interested in filmmaking through K-pop music videos when I was a teenager.

I became obsessed with watching video essays that broke down all the hidden meanings, symbolism, and visual references within them. That curiosity eventually pushed me to start making my own videos, and over time I began developing a visual language of my own.

Later, in my first year at university, I became deeply interested in Wong Kar-wai—like almost every performative person—and started exploring cinema more seriously beyond that.

I was then fortunate enough to secure an internship in Beijing, where I had the opportunity to work on film sets and observe the entire production process up close.

The people I met and the realities of filmmaking—the pressure, collaboration, problem-solving, and unpredictability—were incredibly inspiring to me.

The story of When the Wind Blows will continue as a game. Why did you want to expand the film through an interactive medium?

Our next project is a game that will act as a sequel to When the Wind Blows.

I wanted to experiment with a different storytelling medium and explore how interactivity could allow audiences to experience the world more directly, rather than only observing it from the outside.

The film intentionally leaves certain gaps, unanswered questions, and parts of the world unexplored. With the game, we hope to use that openness to our advantage by expanding the universe, introducing new perspectives, and revealing another side of the story.

Rather than simply retelling the film, the project will invite audiences to move through its world and form a more personal connection with it.

What role do festivals play in giving a personal and visually unconventional film a wider life?

I would say exposure is probably the biggest factor.

Even if the film does not win an award, a festival still gives the work, the cast, and the wider team a chance to be seen by new audiences and industry professionals.

That visibility can lead to opportunities—not only for you as the filmmaker, but for everyone who contributed to the project.

Your festival advice places the emphasis on the team rather than the director. Why is that important to you?

My advice would be to make it less about yourself and more about giving your team a chance.

It is easy to become afraid and put a lot of pressure on yourself to win some form of validation. But it is really not about that.

As long as you have put yourself and the film out there, you have already done yourself and your team a great favour.

You remain hopeful about cinema, but you also believe marketing will increasingly determine which films reach audiences. How do you see that developing?

I am still hopeful about the future of film, although I think marketing will become one of the biggest forces shaping the industry.

There will always be a demand for films because people continue to seek extended storytelling and immersive worldbuilding—whether as a form of escape, emotional connection, or community.

However, as it becomes increasingly difficult to persuade audiences to go to cinemas, film marketing will have to become far more inventive and strategic.

The competition for people’s attention is only going to intensify, so releasing a strong film will no longer be enough on its own.

It will also be about understanding how to reach the right audience, create a wider cultural moment around the work, and build a community that wants to engage with it.

Which filmmakers have influenced your interest in immersive and unconventional worlds?

Over the past few years, I have become particularly drawn to the work of Bi Gan and Juno Mak.

Both filmmakers create such distinct worlds, allowing audiences to become fully immersed even when the story does not follow a conventional narrative structure. The music, pacing, production design, and overall atmosphere all contribute to a strong sense of mystery and ambiguity, giving the audience space to project themselves into the work.

What I find especially compelling about Juno Mak is that his storytelling extends across different mediums—music, music videos, and film—while still feeling like part of one larger, interconnected narrative.

You are not simply watching an individual project. It feels as though you are gradually entering his own creative universe. There is almost a cult-like sense of belonging to it, where the audience begins to understand its codes, symbols, and emotional language.

I know Juno can be a controversial choice, but I genuinely admire his creativity and commitment to unconventional storytelling. His work may not always appeal to a mainstream audience, but pursuing such an ambitious and uncompromising vision across multiple mediums requires a great deal of courage, conviction, and strength of execution.

Is there a recent film whose treatment of difficult emotions stayed with you?

I watched A Real Pain on a plane a few weeks ago, and I really enjoyed it because it gave me a sense of calm amid all the chaos.

It is strangely comforting. You can see aspects of yourself in both Jesse Eisenberg’s and Kieran Culkin’s characters.

I like that use of comedy within heavy subject matter. I think that is simply how life is.

Final Cut: Why When the Wind Blows Matters

Watching When the Wind Blows, I was struck by how accurately the film captures the awkwardness of mourning. Grief is often represented in cinema through eloquent speeches, visible breakdowns, or carefully shaped journeys toward acceptance. Gigi Yang’s film understands that it can also look like building a strange machine, following an impossible signal, or performing small rituals whose meaning may be invisible to everyone else.

That clumsiness is what makes Birdy feel so profoundly human. Her experiment may be scientific in appearance, but emotionally it resembles an act of faith: an attempt to reach someone who is no longer there and to convert guilt into motion when language has failed.

Within the spectrum of independent cinema, the film is important because it demonstrates how personal experience can be translated without being explained away. Yang does not abandon emotional truth when she enters the terrain of science fiction. Instead, she uses worldbuilding to move closer to it. The abandoned landscapes, metallic textures, wearable technologies, and fractured realities are not decoration. They give physical form to an internal condition.

I also find the film’s movement across mediums significant. By continuing Birdy’s story through a game, Yang treats the cinematic world not as a closed object but as a space audiences may eventually inhabit. It reflects a generation of filmmakers for whom cinema, fashion, music video, visual art, and interactive storytelling no longer need to exist in separate rooms.

When the Wind Blows reminds me that independent cinema is often where grief is allowed to remain unresolved, strange, and unfinished. It does not promise closure. It offers something more honest: the possibility that making, searching, and continuing may themselves become forms of mourning.