RUIKI ZENG:

“I’m a life observer,

not only a filmmaker,

photographer,

graphic designer…

Ruiqi Zeng was born in Nanjing in 1999, who is raised up in China until the age of 16 when she chose to study in the Australian education system. She has shown a great interest in both English and films since her childhood. As for now, Ruiqi started her adventure in the film industry mainly as a director, writer, and actress based in both China and Australia.

At the very beginning, she tried a lot of categories of films in her undergraduate study at the University of New South Wales, such as documentaries, 2D animation, and certainly narrative short films. Tinsmith was the first work she did in the Australian film industry in 2019 which is a documentary recording and rearranging the thoughts of a niche and characteristic local band called Tinsmith. It is a story about Tinsmith but interpreted in her team’s way with the unique documentary script and moving camera language. In the same year, she also took a trial in narrative cinema with the work called The Red Thread Of Fate which was costar and directed by herself. Though the story is simply set between a couple confronting a hard decision laid in front of them, it can be told from her later experiences that narrative cinema would be the essential direction she is eager to develop in.

As she started her postgraduate study at the University of Sydney, she began to challenge herself with a higher level. Causality and Future or Now are two representative works she directed and also costar between 2020 and 2021. It can be seen that the level of the core in the script and all other aspects were lifted and more mature compared to previous works. Ruiqi is still challenging herself to a higher level in her career and her potential should be approved.