A Girl Unknown
Born in the wake of China’s controversial one-child policy, six-year-old Wang Juan (Cao Ruofan) finds her life completely upended by her mother’s pregnancy. The young girl is soon taken from her rural home—where kite-flying and swimming fill her days—and brought to the home of a discordant, childless couple. Abandoned in an unfamiliar city with her new legal guardians, Juan strives to find a sense of belonging, a struggle that only worsens when she’s uprooted twice more before turning 18 years old. Anchored by a powerful performance from Resurrection’s Li Gengxi, who plays teenage Juan, Zou Jing’s confident debut is an achingly tender coming-of-age drama. And while it never shies away from the harrowing realities of the political directive that dehumanized and haunted so many, A Girl Unknown also reaffirms the undeniable, striking hopefulness of a young person’s belief in love and self. —Kate Bove
Director/s
Jing Zou
Zou Jing is a Chinese writer/director. She started her career making TV documentaries and commercials before pursuing her dream of writing and directing films. Her first narrative short Lili Alone (2021) won numerous international awards and screened at more than 80 international film festivals, including the Leitz Cine Discovery Prize for Best Short Film at the 60th Cannes Critic's Week and the Best Fiction Short Film at the 69th Melbourne International Film Festival. Her debut feature, A Girl Unknown (2026), won Cannes Critics’ Week Next Step Prize for its script in 2024, and went on to win Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight FIPRESCI Prize and the Gan Foundation Award for Distribution.