During the 25th Shanghai International Film Festival, the work "Street Boys" that came out of the SIFF PROJECT "Young Director Project" was screened nationwide on June 16. The day before the release, director Na Jiazuo came to Shanghai from the Jinan road show to participate in the venture capital honor announcement of this year's Shanghai Film Festival.

"I've been to a lot of film festivals, and I've always wanted to go home and watch it." After "Street Kids" started from the Shanghai Film Festival, it went all the way to the "Unique Concern" unit in Cannes. Na Jiazuo joked that he was not yet 30 years old at the time, and the producer Guan Hu hadn't "gone his beard" yet.

"Street Kids" poster

"Street Baby" is supervised by Guan Hu, with Liang Jing as the chief producer, directed by Na Jiazuo, and starring Li Jiuxiao, Huang Miyi, Yu Ailei, Sha Baoliang, and Yao Lu. With the migratory tide of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou as the background, it focuses on the growth process of a group of young people in the Sichuan-Chongqing region who wanted to leave but did not leave at the beginning of this century, and goes deep into the inner world of this group of people step by step, exploring a unique spiritual state and life experience .

The rigid and cold father-son relationship, the overwhelming pressure of life, the restless youth, the unspeakable love... The film uses vigorous audio-visual language to depict the stubborn Dongzi, the wandering Jiu'er, the down-and-out Xijun and a group of children. Town youth, they are like weeds growing on the street, no matter in the face of strong winds and rains or hard rocks and gravels, they still grow tenaciously.

Presenting a "painful" character

"Street Baby" tells a painful youth past.

In the humid and quiet mountain city fireworks, "street baby" Dongzi (played by Li Jiuxiao) is struggling to make a living. The days are slowly going through bloodshed and injuries, but after all, Dongzi has two inseparable sustenances: one is the care of his stubborn father, and the other is the obsession with Jiuer (Huang Miyi), the owner of the tattoo shop. emotion. Dongzi tried his best to live out his happiness in the complicated world, but he couldn't escape the love-hate entanglement caused by his father, Jiuer, Xijun, fourth brother and other characters.

Director Na Jiazuo said in an interview with The Paper that when he first created the characters, he was first substituted into his state in adolescence and in his early 20s. There will be a moment in a person's life when he is close to an animal."

Stills of "Street Kids"

The film shows the audience the plight and encounters of people of different ages, and each character in the film has a corresponding prototype in reality. The Xi Jun played by Yu Ailei is an image of a person in society. It was created based on a friend of Na Jiazuo's father. His name is Xi Jun, but he is not a lame man. "Maybe I have only seen him twice in his life. When I was a child, he opened a pool hall and KTV, and he was very popular. It was the early 1990s. I was a child at that time, and I was still very energetic when I saw him. Yes. When I see him again, he is 52 years old, he has already had a cerebral thrombosis due to drinking, is divorced, his daughter has just entered college, and his money is almost gone, such a state."

In Na Jiazuo's view, narratives in this world are all cross-sectional. "When someone comes to tell you about a friend of his, he will talk about how he met this person 10 years ago, and how he met this person 10 years later. I think the change in the ten years in between, all kinds of this The character's experience creates his current moment." The role of Xi Jun has assumed the various encounters and unsatisfactory experiences of many people in life. In addition, the arrangement that the father's character has a heart problem in the film also comes from Na Jiazuo's father's physical condition.

Na Jiazuo believes that each of us actually has a neutral side. When he started to construct the character of Jiu'er, he took out the most sensitive part of himself to create this female character. During the creation process, he gradually discovered that in the story of "Street Boys", the boundary between men and women is not so clear, but a feature that swings back and forth. "I am reluctant to say that this is the story of four men and one woman. I will grasp their most typical characteristics and say that this is a cripple and another person who is vacillating, that is Jiuer. It just so happens that this is a story made by The role played by a woman, and a lonely late hero, and a very obsessive social elder brother, is probably such a description of it.”

Stills of "Street Kids"

The film is full of strong emotions, behind the anger and accusations, there is a bit of nothingness. Dongzi, Jiuer, Xijun, father, fourth brother, the unique temperament of hostility and warmth embodied in the main characters in the film is not only a characteristic of that era, but also a characteristic of people living in third- and fourth-tier cities. universal commonality.

The fragility and sensitivity of being a human being is also the theme Na Jiazuo wants to express. Some time after the script was written, Na Jiazuo went along the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River to select the scene. In third- and fourth-tier cities, he observed people on the street while taking a walk. He often saw people in this state, and the reality of life in them was far more vivid than he imagined.

Li Jiuxiao, who plays Dongzi, and Na Jiazuo have known each other since they were studying at the Film Academy. This role was almost tailor-made for him by Na Jiazuo. The script had only written 10 scenes, so Jia Zuo couldn't hold back and sent the script to Li Jiuxiao. "He has a quality that other people don't have—his eyes are very clean. He is also very sincere, and there is something childish about him. The unique thing about him impresses me very much."

Each character in the film bears pain in different externalized forms, some are the pain of tattooing, some are suffering from the pain of disease, and some are the pain of fighting. "Pain is a special inner thing, and real pain is silent." In terms of fighting action design, Na Jiazuo wants to present a kind of "bloodless violence", allowing the audience to calmly look at what is happening Violent scenes do not need to focus on the gore and intensity of violence. "Dongzi has a sense of danger. The group of people I photographed all have an uncontrollable danger, but behind the sense of danger is their love."

At the 74th Cannes International Film Festival in 2021, the director of "Street Boys" Na Jiazuo and the heroine Huang Miyi appeared on the red carpet

Art student expelled from Nortel

Na Jiazuo said that if he didn't go to the High School Attached to the Academy of Fine Arts, there might be a high probability that he would live like Dongzi. Restlessness seems to be the emotion that runs through Na Jiazuo's adolescence.

Before entering the Film Academy to study film, Na Jiazuo first graduated from the High School Attached to the Academy of Fine Arts. Originally he wanted to do contemporary art, and his favorite directions were murals and sculptures, but he failed to get admitted to the Academy of Fine Arts as he wished, and entered Beijing Film Academy to study photography by accident.

"It's good to go to the Department of Photography. The vision I presented before was all static, and that's what I learned. But when you go to the film school, you want to think about what the dynamics are like, and what are the different standard systems and guidelines."

When he was studying, Na Jiazuo was very interested in documentaries, even surpassing his original major in the film school. He often went to the documentary class to listen to them. As a result, in his sophomore year, he had an extra special period of being expelled from the film school due to too many absenteeism experience. "At that time, I was self-willed, unruly, and ignorant, so I thought this class might be interesting, so I went to listen to it, and if it might be fun, I went to learn it." Later, when talking about this experience, Jia Zuo had already "clouded Light breeze." "When you drop out of school, you will definitely feel dissatisfied in your heart. Later, when you grow up, you will feel that the rules have been broken by you, and you will have to pay the price."

Stills of "Street Kids"

Na Jiazuo is grateful for the learning experience at the High School Attached to the Central Academy of Fine Arts, which brought him not only the habit of composition and color, but also the observation method and overall perception of the picture formed by repeated painting training. "When drawing a picture, you often have to look at the whole from a distance. What it tells you is that in terms of observation methods, you must learn to see the relationship between the whole and the parts, and summarize the details you see into the whole." The grasp of the whole and details in the painting was transferred by Na Jiazuo to the narrative of the film.

""Street Kids" is also constantly interrupted and connected, and then there will be a sense of alienation. This is actually a kind of observation method I got from painting, and it is also related to my narrative method." In Na Jia According to Zuo, any kind of training, regardless of music and dance, is actually connected by analogy. It will be related to other things, and you can find a way and perspective to look at the world from it.

"Street Kids" has undergone many changes and adjustments from the script creation to the current release. "The biggest adjustment is that as I grow older, my eyes on the world are no longer as angry or superior as before"—— "I need to make my live materials and my past narratives based on my current understanding." Jia Zuo told The Paper that the script was written at the age of twenty-six or seventeen, but he was not satisfied with many cognitions at the time, and the harvest in the whole process, "I think it is a movie that is sincere enough to myself. "

Director Na Jiazuo (right) made a presentation at the 2017 SIFF PROJECT

Director Na Jiazuo (left) at the negotiation site of 2020 SIFF PROJECT

As the chief producer of "Street Boys", Liang Jing was pleasantly surprised by the change in Na Jiazuo's handling method. "Now he has used some artistic means to emphasize some things in his own style, which makes people feel very raw and cold. When I watched it, I actually felt depressed, but the movie needs this kind of emotion. emotions and weave different life stories.”

Producer Guan Hu told Liang Jing at first that he saw in Na Jiazuo that he was very "ge" when he was young (ge, it means weird in Beijing dialect). But Liang Jing said: "It's useless to have this energy alone. Many people who play rock and paint have this kind of 'ge' thing, but you have to really use your talent."

It turns out that Liang Jing, a Cancer, often has mother-like thoughts, and Na Jiazuo, who is like a "little tube tiger", can't get over a dispute over how to shoot or cut a scene. "I also reflected on it. In some places, it would have been better if I had been tougher, but anyway, the creative attitude of 'Tiger' is freedom." Later, Liang Jing discovered, "He will definitely not recognize it, and he must hit that wall. , Hit the wall and fall down, you know how much it hurts." Regarding the growth path of the new director, the producer finally had to "let it go".

Na Jiazuo remembers very clearly that Guan Hu sent him the word "enjoyed" before the filming started, "In fact, this is a kind of affirmation. Of course, "Street Boy" was very enjoyable for me to shoot."