Lulu Wang’s Sundance smash, “The Farewell,” will be released by A24 this Friday. It’s simply one of the most formally layered and dramatically nuanced films of the year, and we imagine the indie film community will be hearing the incredibly talented filmmaker’s name come up in more than a few conversations this summer and hopefully this upcoming awards season as well.
With her unanimously acclaimed movie currently sitting at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes – as our review put it, “the brilliance of “The Farewell” is how it taps into a human universality… and it’s a clear cut breakthrough for Wang” — the Chinese American artist has already locked down her next project. Today Big Beach and Votiv announced they would be producing Wang’s third film, “a science fiction feature” titled “Children of the World.”
No plot specifics have been released, but the material is allegedly being adapted from author Alexander Weinstein’s well-respected short story collection of the same name, which will apparently share the title of Wang’s picture. What’s particularly fascinating about this reveal is the previous announcement that former video essayist, Kogonada (“Columbus”) has also been prepping his highly anticipated second feature, which will be mining its story influence from the same sci-fi anthology.
Here is the short story collection’s official synopsis:
Children of the New World introduces readers to a near-future world of social media implants, memory manufacturers, dangerously immersive virtual reality games, and alarmingly intuitive robots. Many of these characters live in a utopian future of instant connection, and technological gratification that belies an unbridgeable human distance, while others inhabit a post-collapse landscape made primitive by disaster, which they must work to rebuild as we once did millennia ago.
READ MORE: Colin Farrell To Star In New A24 Sci-Fi Drama ‘After Yang’ From Filmmaker Kogonada
Kogonada’s film will reportedly be adapted from the story, “Saying Goodbye to Yang” — and potentially be titled “After Yang” — but there is no official confirmation on whether Wang’s film will be interpreting a single story, or whether it may be something more akin to “Burning,” which might be based on Haruki Murakami’s short story “Barn Burning” — from his collection “The Elephant Vanishes” — but is truly a distilled adaption of the author’s entire body of work from a thematic perspective.
It has already felt like an exceptional year for Asian American representation; the “Mulan” trailer made epic waves on Asian Film Twitter the other day, and Lulu Wang’s film is simply primed and ready to connect with audiences around the globe. If A24 plays their cards right, there’s a solid possibility the company will have another Oscar hit on their hands (expect to hear much deserved Awkawfina and Lulu Wang campaigning, very soon).
Lulu Wang’s “The Farewell,” will be released Friday, July 12, and it’s a film no movie lover will want to miss.