WATCH: Poignant New Documentary 'Shanghai Girls'

By Ned Kelly, December 6, 2024

In Shanghai in the early 90s, a high school girls choir achieved brief fame for their singing talents on the national stage.

They were the promise of youth in a time of change, when society was transforming as rapidly as the city, and traditional ideas of the role of women were giving way to new possibilities for girls like them.

Thirty years later, the now middle-aged friends reunite for the first time in decades to share their stories, tears and laughter, and to reflect on what being a woman can mean.

Shot over the course of a year, Shanghai Girls follows filmmaker Luo Tong as she reconnects with her former classmates. In a series of intimate encounters and conversations, she uncovers the winding paths they have walked, through marriage, career, love, family and ambition, to where they are today.

Check out a trailer for the documentary below:

In cinemas now, we caught up with Luo Tong to learn more about this most personal of projects.

How did the film first come about?
In a way, it came about by accident. My 30 year high school reunion was coming up, and I had volunteered to organize a small party for my old classmates.

I’ve stayed in touch with many of them, but this was going to be the first we were all together in a very long time, so I wanted it to be special. I’m a filmmaker, so I’d asked my crew to come along and shoot what I thought would be a short event video that I could share with everyone afterwards.

We’re all middle-aged now, but the moment we got together that day we turned into school kids again. All the old memories flooded in, and there was a lot of laughter.

But I realized I also wanted to ask them so much. What had happened to the girls who had spent three formative years with me? Had they achieved success? Had they found love? Had they realized their dreams? Were they happy?

How did you go about developing it into a feature length documentary?
Usually, when you start to make a documentary, you have an outline that gives at least the basic structure of what the story is going to be.

For this one, I wanted to take a different approach, something that was more open and naturalistic, that would allow the story to be guided by what the characters wanted to say. Because these are all my old friends, everyone was quick to agree to being filmed.

The idea that this was ‘a portrait of a generation of women’ came out of watching the early interviews. Most of my classmates were female; there were only four boys. And we had grown up in the early 90s, which was an important time for Shanghai’s development, when it began to rapidly change into the city we recognize today.

There seemed to be so much possibility available to us, for young women – but also for everyone. The film explores what it meant to have grown up in that time, and how we navigated this changing world.

The interviews and other scenes we shot were more like casual conversations, with them welcoming the cameras in to share their lives and feelings. There were tears and a lot of laughter.

I knew from the beginning that I wanted this film to be very intimate. I use a lot of close-up shots, so that the audience would feel like they were in the room, like they are catching up with their own friends

Post-production was a longer process. I had a lot of very long meetings with my team. We had so many ideas, some of them got quite complicated.

But, in the end, that first impulse to keep it simple and honest was the right one.

It would probably be fair to say that middle-aged women often get overlooked when it comes to their stories being told – how does it feel to get these stories out?
It feels great; I hope we can see more of it.

I’ve been really touched by the range of responses. During the Q&A at one screening, a young college student told me that the fact these women had been friends their whole adult lives really resonated with her.

She was quite emotional; I think she realized that getting older isn’t something to worry about, and that your life will still be very rich.

I’ve also seen a surprising number of men getting emotional, and saying, “"I really didn’t think I would connect with a film about women, but it touched something in me."

I didn’t choose to tell these stories just because they’re women’s stories, I chose to tell them because I think they’re worth sharing.

There is such a diversity of human experience out there, and the more diverse our storytelling is as filmmakers, the more we learn about each other and ourselves.

Which of the personal stories most touched you?
It’s hard to pick. Each of the characters has something to say that I find beautiful, or insightful, or which reveals something about life.

The film really began to emerge for me though after I talked to Zhang Li. She had just divorced and moved out of her ex-husband’s house, renting a small apartment.

"I've never lived alone," she told me. "I‘ve only got RMB2,000 in my pocket, but I have no other choice. I am a divorced 45-year-old woman.

"I have no money, no house, no job. But I have my teenage daughter and elderly mother to care for. I have to find a way to live, for them and for myself.”

As a teenager, Zhang Li never imagine that her future life would be like this. But as I stood in her small kitchen, listening to her slowly unravel her story, I saw determination in her eyes.

Her resolve encouraged me. I found the same resolve in others I interviewed, and eventually, in myself.

Is this the first time you have been such a focus in one of your own documentaries? How did that make you feel?
I tried not to become the focus. I wanted these incredible characters to be the heart of the film. I’m part of this story because these are the people I grew up with.

You can feel it in the way we talk to each other. There’s a lot of familiarity and comfort between friends. We’re getting deep, and at times very emotional, but we’re also joking and laughing.

I used to work in television, so I’m very comfortable in front of camera. But for this, I think its interesting if the audience are almost able to forget I’m there and become part of the conversation themselves.

What do you think current high school girls in today's China will make of the film?
I hope they like it, but also I hope boys go see it too!

Films by and about women sometimes get talked about as though they are just for women. They aren’t. I’ve seen middle-aged men, young families, college kids, old women, Chinese and foreigners, all going to watch the film.

Yes, the characters are middle-aged women, but I think the ideas and the stories speak to very universal experiences.

It really is for everyone. No matter if you are of a different gender, from a different generation, culture, city, we all have the Shanghai Girls spirit.

Please could you explain the distribution model you have adopted?
We’re working with a distributor called Elemeet 大象点映, who specialize in supporting independent filmmakers in China. They have a non-traditional model which makes it easier to connect the film with the right audiences around the country.

Anyone can set up a screening by finding Shanghai Girls on the Elemeet Mini Program and selecting where and when they want to see the film. The distributor then contacts your local cinema and arranges everything – including a good price for tickets.

It’s then down to you to encourage friends or community members to buy tickets. Usually a screening needs to sell 20-30 tickets to go ahead.

Once that’s happened, you’re all set, and you can make the screening whatever you want it to be!

Some people have invited choirs to come and sing, or held discussion circles. I’ve been invited to do so many Q&As, which are a lot of fun. It’s great to see how creative people get, and to see how the film has inspired them.

Of course, if you don’t feel like you can organize a screening yourself, you can just buy a ticket to join an existing one. There are also some screenings organized directly by cinema partners – you can find tickets for these via apps like Taopiaopiao or Maoyan.

Overall it has been a great experience!