The Grand Tour · 2026 China Academy of Art (CAA) Graduation Season has come to a successful close. Graduates from 20 academic units responded to the times with art and explored the future through creativity, unfolding a youthful narrative of ideals, journeys, and growth across the city and campus, transforming Hangzhou into an open art venue that gathers intellectual power, creativity, and action.
The China Academy of Art is proud to launch the "Youth Insights" series, which continues to focus on topics such as avant-garde experimentation, humanities and technology, rural academies, A better China, rooted construction, people-centered, poetic cinema, visual sinology, Eastern design, and overseas insights. The series closely follows how young creators measure the world with their footsteps and respond to the times with their works. Between every departure and arrival, we jointly witness the grand explorations and boundless possibilities of a new generation of artists.
Young filmmakers approach "poetic cinema" as a boundary-breaking attitude and claim. Rather than trying to fit film history into a single mold, they recognize a persistent core: even the faintest poetic impulse expands the medium's linguistic and perceptual boundaries. By embracing the dual tensions of this expansion, they allow seemingly contradictory forces to coexist organically. Informed by contemporary film philosophy and ongoing theoretical refinement, their work persistently channels creative energy into conceptual vitality and the development of an auteur cinema rooted in poetic aesthetics.
The Fox
Artist: Song Zixian
College/School: School of Film
Supervisor: Liu Zhihai
Medium: Short Narrative Film (28 min)
Film Synopsis
The film tells the story of Yili, a young man who ventures into the desert in search of a fox, embarking on a journey of encounters and self-discovery. It explores the rupture, disorientation, and reconstruction of the individual in the face of modern civilization's impact on traditional culture. Set against the backdrop of the Xinjiang desert, this is a realistic short film with an ecological allegorical dimension. It unfolds from a local fable, and because the director grew up in a multi-ethnic cultural environment, the Xinjiang desert space proves to be the most fitting setting—offering both visual texture and sonic atmosphere that carry qualities of spectacle and allegory. On the surface, it is a story of a young man searching for a fox; at a deeper level, it conveys the conflict between modern and traditional cultures. Although Yili ultimately gains his freedom, a more significant question lingers: where is he to go from here? Lamu failed to become a fox, yet like the fox, became an innocent victim. When different versions of the same fable re-emerge in reality, how is Yili to re-examine this blurred boundary?
Advisor's Message
Set against the landscape of northwestern China, the film employs the multifaceted imagery of the "fox" to weave together four character dimensions—lost, wise, cunning, and untethered—culminating in the protagonist Yili's epiphany that "to see the fox is to see himself." This symbolic system demonstrates both sharp ethnographic insight and a profound engagement with the universal dilemma of individuals grappling with rupture, disorientation, and reconstruction under the assault of modern civilization. The subject matter is rich in cultural and philosophical reflection, and the character configurations reveal a clear authorial vision. The life details and thematic interpretation within the film would benefit from more restrained use of negative space, and the post-production still requires further refinement. Overall, the film boasts exceptional visual and sonic quality—a sincere and ambitious work of considerable depth.
— Liu Zhihai
Song Zixian
Graduated from the School of Film, China Academy of Art. His directorial works include:
Bling Bling — Winner of Best Screenplay and Best Short Film at the 2022 Zhejiang Youth Golden Pheasant Film Festival; also selected for the 6th Pioneer Art Film Festival and Chongqing Youth Film Festival.
Smoking Scene — First Prize at the "72-Hour On-Site Creation" segment of the 2024 Zhejiang University Student Film Season.
The Fox — Winner of Best Cinematography at the 2026 Film School Academy Awards and Silver Award of the Lin Fengmian Creation Award.
He has participated in the production of over a dozen short films during his academic career. His works have been selected for and have received awards at numerous festivals, including the 86358 Jia Village Short Film Week, FIRST International Film Festival, Xiying Chunguang, IM Cross-Strait Youth Film Festival, and the Golden Rooster Young Filmmakers Short Film Season.
