A GIRL UNKNOWN

(Wu ming nü hai / La Deuxième fille)

Special Screening| China, France | 2026 | Drama, Coming-of-age | 128 min | In Mandarin and other Chinese dialects with English subtitles

Directed by: Jing Zou
Written by: Jing Zou
Produced by: Didar Domehri (Maneki Films), Wang Yang (Memoria Films), Cao Xi (Emei Film Group), Xu Jiahan (Pure light Films), Edmond Tao (Eagle Media), Arte France Cinéma
Cinematography: Liang Zhongqiang
Original Score: Valentin Hadjadj 
Film Editing: Jing Zou, Tina Baz
Cast: Li Gengxi (Wang Juan / Wu Lian), Shen Jiani (Ding Meshuang), Zu Feng (Wang Weiqiang), Cao Ruofan (Lin Fan / young Wang Juan)
International Sales: Pyramide International
US Distribution: Greenwich entertainment
US Release date: TBA 

Synopsis

Wang Juan is a lively 6-year-old girl when her father dies. Her mother takes up with another man, soon finds herself pregnant… and little Juan is shipped off to live with another family. In fact, she’s shuttled from family to family, changing names and parents three times before her 18th birthday. This was the tragic reality — especially for girls — under China’s cruel one-child policy, which was the law of the land from 1980 to 2016. Jing Zou‘s delicate film is the achingly sorrowful, yet miraculously optimistic tale of one child’s search for identity and a sense of belonging, despite feeling abandoned and repeatedly uprooted.

Director’s bio

Chinese writer/director Jing Zou‘s first short, Lili Alone (2021), has been screened in more than 80 international film festivals and won the Leitz Cine Discovery Prize for Best Short Film at the 60th Cannes Critics’ Week. Her first feature-length script, for A Girl Unknown, won the Critics’ Week Next Step Prize in 2024. The finished film premiered in the Critics’ Week Section of Cannes this year, where it won both the FIPRESCI Prize and the Gan Foundation Award, as well as the Best Film by an Emerging Director award in Munich.