Kogonada's 'zi': A Secret Hong Kong Experiment Reboots a Career

Kogonada shot zi in secret in Hong Kong after his studio romantic fantasy A Big Bold Beautiful Journey failed to win over audiences or critics. The film premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival and reaches theaters on November 6.

The project marks a deliberate career reset for the director of Columbus (2017) and After Yang (2021). Reviewers place such pivots in a lineage that includes David Lynch's Blue Velvet and M. Night Shyamalan's The Visit — filmmakers who rebounded from ill-received, larger-scope features. Kogonada traveled to Hong Kong with only a few of his closest collaborators to shoot something spontaneous and free from complex studio logistics, according to the review published by The Film Stage.

What is 'zi' about?

The shapeless story follows Zi, played by Michelle Mao, a young woman roaming Hong Kong while carrying a mysterious guilt and premonitions of a fatal tumor diagnosis. She is an accomplished violinist whose upcoming tour may depend on the medical answer. She visits her parents' graves, lamenting that she is starting to forget their faces and blaming herself for not looking at them more while they were alive.

At a low point, she rests on concrete steps, consoling herself with her own tears. There she meets L, played by Haley Lu Richardson in a wig the review suggests might make Wong Kar-wai proud. The two instantly connect and begin a venture together. Jin Ha appears as Min, an old flame whose return raises questions of unresolved romance and unusual bonds.

How does it look and sound?

The review describes zi as less a narrative than a rhythmic, sensory, non-linear experience — instinctively edited by Kogonada himself, stitching together the images and sounds of a bustling city. Music anchors the film's most memorable sequences, drawing on Ryuichi Sakamoto's tranquil piano alongside renditions of Alanis Morissette's "Hand in My Pocket" and John Denver's "Leaving on a Jet Plane." One scene, perfectly framed, shows Zi displaying her violin prowess.

Benjamin Loeb's loose, grainy cinematography of a woman and a cityscape in turmoil supports the director's small-scale aim of evoking a specific feeling. The improvisational nature of most sequences can make the emotional experience opaque, the review notes, yet the assembled shots hold a beauty that lingers.

"This is why I love Hong Kong. City dancing with nature. The push and pull of it," a character exclaims early in the film; later, a hobby of recording the city's sounds surfaces in the story.

Does the experiment succeed?

The review's verdict is measured. With its barely-there script, zi functions more as Kogonada's personal travelogue than a fully formed feature, and the methodical consideration of form that marked his first two features is absent here. It is not fully engaging on a narrative level, but it proves the filmmaker has not lost his craft — a movie that may mean more to him than to most viewers. If this spontaneous cinematic rendezvous was what the director needed to prove he can still get behind the camera and embark on another project, the review concludes, that is a worthwhile enough reason for the film to exist. Its November 6 theatrical release will test whether that instinct transfers to audiences.