Feiyu, who prefers to be called by his given name only, hails from Sichuan Province in China and is a young director and screenwriter. He wrote the screenplay for the animated film “Shadow King” (2019), which was nominated for the top ten films under the Dragon Leap Plan of the Cannes Film Festival. In 2019, it won the Venture Capital Award for Best Animation at the Beijing “The Belt and Road” Film Festival and the New Light Award at the 8th China Xi’an International Original Animation Competition.
His directorial debut “Football on the Roof” which was shot some years ago but was halted several times due to the Covid-19 pandemic, won the Golden Rooster Award (the Chinese equivalent to the “Oscar”) for Best Children’s Film in early November 2024. At its first festival participation outside of China, at the Children’s Film Festival in Vienna, Austria, the Children’s Jury unanimously awarded the Main Prize to “Football on the Roof”.
On the occasion of the festival screenings in Vienna, we talked with Feiyu about the film’s extraordinary locations, about football as a metaphor, about working with his young actresses and about the support he received from outstanding veteran filmmaker Huang Jianxin.
Have you studied film? If so, where and for how long?
My major was not film, but I have loved films since I was a child because my father worked in the cultural administration of a small county, and he was also in charge of cinemas. I grew up watching films in the cinema. I have taken part in some short-term film training courses in China, such as film festivals. Since I love films so much, I will work hard to study all the information about films that I can find in the library.
How do you relate to the southern Chinese province of Yunnan, where your film is set?
During my travels in Yunnan in 2017, I often saw scenes of three generations of people playing football together. The local elders also enjoyed watching football matches. They said that when they were young, they had played with balls made of bamboo strips. This is the origin of the bamboo ball that the girl Ayiduo makes for her sister in the film. I later learned that the first national women’s football competition was held in Yunnan in 1981, and then the Chinese women’s national football team was officially established. Yunnan’s football culture, geographical environment, landscape and culture fit the place where I imagined the story, and the children in the mountains have a wild spirit that refuses to admit defeat. This was exactly what I wanted to show.
The village seems very idyllic, despite the hard work that even the children have to do there. How realistically is it portrayed?
Yunnan is a very rural area and a place where several ethnic groups live together. Therefore, I used real scenes and appropriate shooting techniques to let the audience feel the quality of life and love of life in this magical old village. The red soil that we see in the film is a typical feature of Yunnan. It was an unforgettable experience for me to explore the local characteristics and incorporate them into the film from my own perspective. For example, there is a scene in the film on the red strip of land by the river bank. After obtaining the relevant permits, we rented two excavators and bulldozers and hired dozens of workers to remove garbage, weeds and algae. Everything was thoroughly cleaned and restored to its original beauty.
Check the review of the film
When I was creating the storyboard in the early stages, I had communicated with the photography team countless times, but without any actual reference to architecture, it was just a theoretical conversation. I was lucky to find an almost abandoned village in Honghe Prefecture that met the basic requirements I was looking for. I had some buildings in this village renovated and a few newly built, and finally realized my ideal village.
The distance, width, height, and arc of movement of the actors and the football between the village roofs were fully prepared and tested before filming. Mountains, water, and villages are the core elements of the spatial environment and represent a faithful depiction of the Honghe (Red River) area, so they are perfectly integrated into the images I designed. I hope that viewers will get closer to these mountains, water, and villages, that the texture of the film will become three-dimensional, and that they will be drawn into this artistic conception when watching.
Are the people there members of an ethnic minority?
Yes, Yunnan is a place with a population of more than 46 million people and 25 ethnic minorities living together peacefully.
Why did you choose football as a backdrop to tell your story?
I was previously a screenwriter, mostly writing animation and science fiction. Then, when I wanted to make a film myself, I was thinking about what topic to choose for it. Yunnan’s football culture had left a deep impression on me. You often see grandfathers in their 70s and 80s playing football with their grandchildren. I also thought about my own experiences playing football as a child and wondered if I could make a film telling a story about children’s development with football as a backdrop.
What was it that drew you to the story?
What interested me most was showing the world through the eyes of children. I think about it often. In fact, everyone of us was once a child. We have experienced so much as adults that we have forgotten that we were also innocent children. As children, we are always curious about the world. As we grow up, this curiosity gradually fades. We only want to live according to our own ideas, so there is a lot of dissatisfaction, and many good things in life are destroyed. What children show us is a completely new world in which there are all the beautiful things that adults have lost. That is why we must learn from children, constantly rediscover ourselves and find the balance of life again. Ayimei and the other children have the childlike innocence and love of life that we adults have lost, they have more love for all things in the world. “Football on the Roof” allows adult viewers to relive and pay attention to children’s love of life, and it allows children and young people to experience the joy and courage of growing up among their peers. Love for something can extend our short lives indefinitely and create a warmer and more beautiful life. That was the most important insight for me when making the film.
What were your thoughts on filming it?
In fact, the concept of playing football on a rooftop was an early idea I had. Sometimes, I come up with strange things. Maybe it’s because I’ve had a love of comics since I was a kid. The problem I was thinking about solving from the beginning was: how to actually make this happen? At the time, the production team suggested that I abandon the rooftop concept and just shoot in a normal village. If I had my ideal village built entirely, the producer would probably have gone mad. So it was very important that I find a balance within a limited budget that would accommodate my unique spatial vision of my village.
Before filming began, I wanted to take the children to live in “our” village, practice football, play, eat, etc. This was to familiarize the children with the environment, to build a connection with the village, so that when they later act out their scenes, they are like children who grew up in that area. Every movement of the children is aligned with the roof structure. The pomelo football moves on the children’s feet from one roof to another and then from top to bottom. The pomelo’s trajectory is used to reveal the overall image of the village, so that the audience can clearly feel the spatial level, the living structure of village life and the unique atmosphere.
The same goes for the costumes: the clothing is mainly made of locally produced fabrics. We went to the villages to collect old clothes for improvement. This place is a multi-ethnic area, and the clothing styles are also diverse. Before starting the film, I visited the local cultural history museum, and after gathering a lot of information about local cultural customs, I knew the style of clothing in the film, keeping certain ethnic elements, while making others closer to modern life. But the most important thing was that the audience should feel the children’s love for life in this film.
There are repeated aerial shots of the village or region. What dramatic purpose do they serve? Are these shots something like pauses in which the audience can reflect?
Yes, this is in line with the unrestricted space of children’s thinking. In the eyes of children, the world is a vast and limitless space. I used the shots to expand the visual space of the film, because the visual space of the human eye is too narrow. And I wanted to give the audience a sense of the structure, the environment and the various changes in light of this magical old village.
You have very different pacing in the film. Sometimes it moves very quickly, then more contemplative scenes dominate.
I didn’t want the film to be too slow, like when we eat a piece of candy, we always chew it quickly when we first put it in our mouth. But when we’re about to finish it, we unconsciously slow down, start to think and long for the next piece of candy to come.
What role do the music and songs play in the film?
The theme songs and music in the film are all original compositions and contain elements of local culture.
Why is women’s football so popular in China?
The Chinese women’s football team is definitely stronger than the men’s football team, the women dare more, they fight more on the football field, they really love football. The audience notices this too.
How did you find and choose the girls for the film?
The children in the film are all amateurs, and it was their first time taking part in a film shoot. At first we tried to select children with performance experience, but after the physical fitness test we found that many children lack exercise and have trouble walking. In more than five months, I visited 203 schools in Yunnan and selected more than 20 children from more than 10,000 local students.
Tang Liangfeng seems to be very talented. Is she a football player in real life?
Tang Liangfeng, the girl who plays Ayimei, likes football very much and took part in football training at school, but she was not a real football player. We found her in a local elementary school. My assistant had initially disregarded Tang Liangfeng. She was only eleven years old and looked too thin, but her eyes were very lively. After I walked over and talked to her for ten minutes, I was quite sure that this child was the Ayimei I was looking for. When I met Tan Xinyu, who plays the role of her older sister Ayiduo, she was so shy that she could only do three or four movements in the ball test. She was a football novice. After she was cast, she grew up very quickly, which surprised me. She was very able to endure hardships. While other children were resting, Tan Xinyu continued to practice under the scorching sun. When the film ended, she could shoot hundreds of balls. In March 2024, she participated in the China Youth Football League. She developed from a child who couldn’t play football to a real player. Since our film finished, the football life of Tang Liangfeng and Tan Xinyu has continued.
What role does the coach play in your film?
In addition to his role as a coach, Shi Kai may also have a fatherly position of caring for and loving these children. There is a scene in the film where Ayimei and other children find him drinking in an abandoned stranded boat by the river. This scene and the propeller boat were specially arranged by me because this abandoned boat stranded on the shore symbolizes the character of Coach Shi Kai. He once loved football and pursued his dream, but he failed. He is like this abandoned ship stranded on the shore. Later, he is moved by Ayimei’s persistent spirit, for he sees in the children the self that once ruled his dreams. So later, there is a scene when the coach and his people repair the boat and take the children in the boat the next day to prepare for the competition.
What about the mother’s story? Isn’t this part of the plot too serious for a children’s film?
In fact, the mother’s situation is a true story, but I don’t want to talk too much about the mother’s story because the real meaning of her character is to promote the relationship between the older sister and the younger sister, so that the younger sister understands that the older sister has contributed everything to her growth, the love that the older sister feels for the younger sister. The older sister has basically taken on the role of a mother to love and protect her younger sister.
Was the filming affected by Covid-19?
The film was shot in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic, and we encountered great difficulties like filmmakers all over the world did at that time. The closed environment, the inconvenience of collaboration, and the lack of money were very problematic. After the filming was finished under pressure, post-production also had to pause. Then a turning point came. At the end of December 2021, our film won the “Jury Special Recommendation Award” at the China Golden Rooster Film Festival, gaining recognition throughout the Chinese film industry. Our film was praised by Huang Jianxin, the chairman of the Venture Capital Conference, at the China Golden Rooster Film Festival. Thanks to his dedication, we were able to complete post-production. He arranged for the professional producer Ren Ning to be in charge of my post-production process.
Huang Jianxin watched the film with me frame by frame and edited it again. During this stage, the production improved and I improved myself. Huang Jianxin is an expert in the whole process of filmmaking, shooting, editing, music, sound mixing, lighting and coloring. What I learned from him was not only technique, but also my own understanding and reflection, as well as sincere and passionate love for film. So the film has attracted great attention in China because some greats of the Chinese film business worked as a team to help complete it and bring it to the audience. I am very grateful to Huang Jianxin for his help.
Has your film been shown in China?
“Football on the Roof” was released in China this year and did well. And I’m very happy that it was awarded the Golden Rooster Award for the best children’s film. The Golden Rooster, as you probably know, is the most prestigious film award in China.
What is your next project? What is it about?
My next project is a science fiction film, and I also want to make an adventure animation film.
