Filmmaker Turns Grandfather's Love Letters Into Award-Winner

When Bian Zhuo discovered his late grandfather's diary, he found love letters written to his grandmother after she had died. "Yuanqing, I miss you so much," one entry read. "I felt as if I were holding your hand in my sleep."

Those yellowing pages, filled with elegant cursive script, sparked an idea. The then-36-year-old filmmaker would create a movie about the love and tensions between three generations of a Chinese family.

Bian returned to his hometown of Kunming in southwestern China with just $300,000. Half came from his own savings, half borrowed from family. He assembled a crew of under 40 people and cast mostly local amateurs who had never acted before.

The result was "As the Water Flows," named after Green Lake in downtown Kunming where Bian grew up. The film follows an elderly grandfather seeking companionship after his wife's death, only to face resistance from his three daughters.

Bian never expected what happened next. The intimate family story won Best Film at the 2025 Shanghai International Film Festival's Asian New Talent Award. It went on to win at the Hong Kong Asian Film Festival and screened at Cannes in May.

The film recreates Bian's grandparents' actual bedroom down to the furniture placement. The grandson character Pangpang is based on young Bian himself. Making the movie became "a form of personal healing," he says, and "a kind of summing up of my own life so far."

Bian learned about his grandfather's complexity through an oral history project during graduate school in the U.S. The quiet intellectual transformed on camera, recounting decades-old memories in vivid detail and revealing how China's Cultural Revolution had shaped his proud yet insecure personality.

Why This Inspires

This story shows how personal pain can transform into art that resonates universally. Bian turned grief over his grandparents' deaths into a film exploring how Chinese families express love through actions rather than words, a dynamic that struck chords far beyond Kunming.

His modest investment and amateur cast prove that authentic storytelling matters more than big budgets. The international recognition validates what Bian already knew: family stories, told honestly, connect us all.

From diary to screen, one grandson's tribute became a bridge between generations and cultures.