Jackie Shijie Xing is a professional film director who has directed captivating films and won many awards from international Oscar-qualifying film festivals. He is leveraging his festival success for his career and building his projects from previous experiences to enhance his directing profession. His high reputation has led him to direct mini-series premiering on leading streaming platforms.
Building upon his Bachelor Degree of Fine Arts in Film and Television from New York University Tisch School of the Arts in 2023, Jackie’s directing skills have influenced his actors to perform at their best. He has written and directed many short films, commercials, music videos, and TV mini-series.
Jackie, what are some of the most renowned film festivals your films have been presented at?
My films have been presented at prestigious Oscar-qualifying festivals, such as HollyShorts, Cinequest, Athens, Woodstock, and Flickers’ Riff. I’ve even had the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, one of Europe’s top three short film festivals, feature my work and showcase my directing skills.
What would you say has contributed to the festival success of your films, particularly Beyond Farewell?
Besides a lot of luck like everything else in the industry, my films that were successful at festivals spoke with the audiences by conveying meaningful messages with relevant genres and characteristics.
I directed Beyond Farewell in 2023. I believe this piece tells a well-crafted story with exceptional music quality that poses a queer theme. This narrative music video is a sci-fi inspired rom-com that tells the story of a grieving AI programmer reuniting with her late girlfriend through AR goggles, a universe set between reality and augmented reality. As a genre flick, Beyond Farewell was the narrative music video for aspiring musician Jingzhi Hu’s song Joi.
Out of the 19 film festivals that exhibited this piece, five of them were Oscar-qualifying, including: 41st Flicker’s Rhode Island International Film Festival, 24th Woodstock Film Festival, 51st Athens International Film and Video Festival, and 33rd Cinequest Film Festival.
My piece even got recognized at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, winning the Prize of the Youth Jury Award. In other honors, it was a nominee for the Best Music Video and Best Short Film prizes at several film festivals.
Dregs was a short film I produced in 2023, which follows the events of a police officer facing brutality allegations and stepping up to the microphone to address potential criminal charges. While this was my NYU thesis film, some people thought the heavy subject matters were too complex for my age, but I pushed through to make this short political drama get selected by seven reputable festivals, including the Oscar-qualifying HollyShorts Film Festival and BronzeLens Film Festival
All my past production experiences and my film festival success led to me transforming into a professional director and taking on formal contracts. My first directorial contract was the short series A Love by Fate, a fantasy romance vertical mini-series. This 79-episode mini-series, made from 130 pages of script, will be my first distributed work to a commercial audience, coming to the ShortMax streaming platform.
In the span of three production days, I directed SNAFU, an independently funded action comedy short. It is currently in post production. It is the first action comedy I have ever directed, and I hope it gets picked up by studios for its feature script or TV treatment.
How do you plan to further enhance your directorial skills for future film successes?
I endeavor to seize every opportunity that I come across and learn from each directing project. I need to direct more films and shows to build my experience and become better at what I do. I firmly hold on to my belief that being a director is a “people job,” so I will strive to be a better person to be a better director.