Following his lovely debut Columbus and strange, stirring sci-fi tale After Yang, Kogonada entered the big-budget filmmaking arena with A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, a misguided romantic fantasy that, despite having its heart in the right place, failed to connect. In an attempt to create something more spontaneous and free from complex studio logistics, he ventured to Hong Kong with just a few of his closest collaborators to shoot a new film off the cuff and in secret. The result is zi, which premiered at Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. Making its New York premiere next week at the Museum of the Moving Image’s First Look 2026, the first trailer has now arrived for the film starring Michelle Mao, Haley Lu Richardson, and Jin Ha.
Here’s the Sundance synopsis: In Hong Kong, a young woman haunted by visions of her future self meets a stranger who changes the course of her night — and possibly her life. Kogonada plays with — and returns to — form in this sensitive cinematic poem. Held within a stylish jaunt through the streets of Hong Kong, zi is a film with soul and a wavelike confidence that commits to recursivity as a mode and central theme. Kogonada regulars Michelle Mao, Haley Lu Richardson, and Jin Ha carefully portray transitory misfits, grappling with a clever fusion of existential anxiety, romantic misgiving, and personal memory. Somewhere between sci-fi and supernatural, a deep, easy warmth takes root. Following Columbus (2017 Sundance Film Festival), After Yang (2020 Sundance Film Festival), and A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, Kogonada crafts a decidedly contained film, exploring a pervasive sense of unmooring, yet cultivating an unrelenting sense of peace. Through the igniting/smoldering embers of relationships lost/forming, zi is an invitation to surrender to Kogonada’s truly indie world of temporal fragmentation.”
I said in my Sundance review, “Not a return to form so much as a diversion into purely instinct-based experimentation, the resulting zi feels different from anything he’s made before, a free-flowing fount of passions and fears examining both the past slipping away and an uncertain future, while also doubling as a poetic city symphony. While not fully engaging on a narrative level, the project at least demonstrates Kogonada hasn’t lost his filmmaking mojo, crafting a movie that may seem more personal to him than most viewers.”
See the trailer below.
