On November 15, during the 2024 Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival in Xiamen, the film Here Is Where the Heart Is premiered in China. American director Robert Zemeckis made a grand appearance on the red carpet with his wife, Leslie, and shared the viewing experience with fans.

The familial emotions and life's reflections conveyed in the film resonated deeply with the audience, while the immersive perspective and unique picture-in-picture editing style provided a refreshing experience. In response to the enthusiastic fans, the director expressed, "It is an immense honor to be here in China, and I am very proud to be part of the Golden Rooster Film Festival."

American director Robert Zemeckis appears on the Golden Rooster red carpet with his wife, Leslie

Here Is Where the Heart Is was produced by an Oscar-winning team and adapted from Richard McGuire's critically acclaimed graphic novel titled HERE. Directed by Robert Zemeckis, it stars Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, Paul Bettany, Kelly Reilly, and Michelle Dockery. The film tells a series of stories about love, loss, laughter, and tears that unfold when multiple families live in the same house over the course of a century. Spanning a long timeline, it captures the most pure human experiences through a uniquely special lens, offering a warmth reminiscent of life lessons, unbounded aspirations akin to a daydreamer, and the helplessness of those navigating marriage, presenting audiences with a century's worth of family tales in 104 minutes.

Poster for Here Is Where the Heart Is

Notably, the classic film Forrest Gump, released in 1994, not only earned Robert Zemeckis the Best Director award at the 67th Academy Awards but also swept six major awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor. The love story between Forrest and Jenny has touched generations of Chinese audiences. Thirty years later, Hollywood stars Tom Hanks and Robin Wright reunite as Richard and Margaret in Here Is Where the Heart Is, evoking nostalgia among the audience, who remarked, "The sentimentality is off the charts."

When asked how it felt to collaborate with his two longtime partners, Zemeckis humorously replied, "We're all older now. Sometimes I look in the mirror and reflect on the marks of time. Seeing them both on set still feels very familiar to me. This shoot is not just a reunion for Tom and Robin; it also brings back the entire team from Forrest Gump after thirty years. We know each other very well, which made the creative process even more enjoyable and pure."

Looking back on his over fifty-year career as a director, it is evident that Zemeckis has always maintained a high enthusiasm for technological innovation. Whether it was creating a new model of live-action combined with animation in the 1980s with Who Framed Roger Rabbit, or skillfully utilizing CGI in Forrest Gump to recreate memorable historical moments like "a small ball moving a big ball," or employing full digital production processes in The Polar Express to create a series of lifelike virtual images using motion capture technology, his contributions remain memorable.

Still from Here Is Where the Heart Is

Zemeckis mentioned that compared to other art forms, film can better showcase the passage of time, stating, "Movies are a medium that manipulates time." "While Forrest Gump tells the protagonist's story over three decades, the story of the two main characters in Here Is Where the Heart Is spans sixty to seventy years, which is one similarity between the two films. On the technical front, in order to present the actors at different ages, we utilized digital makeup, a technique that may not have been perfectly achievable five years ago."

During a post-screening interaction, director Guo Zhi Jian confessed his admiration for Zemeckis, stating, "Since Back to the Future, I have pursued almost all your works. Here Is Where the Heart Is is a special film; I could never have imagined that the entire narrative flows through an immersive perspective. The last shot, where Margaret glances back at the past, is perhaps the only moving shot in the entire film, and it moved me to tears." Zemeckis expressed his gratitude, saying, "I hope my presentation of this story or film allows audiences to experience a viewing style that they have never felt before; that, to me, is the most fascinating aspect of the art of cinema."