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Jia Zhang-ke on His Cannes Short ‘Torino Shadow,’ AI, and Why Cinema Still Needs You in the Room

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CitrixNews Staff
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Jia Zhang-ke on His Cannes Short ‘Torino Shadow,’ AI, and Why Cinema Still Needs You in the Room
May 16, 2026 10:20pm PT Jia Zhang-ke on His Cannes Short ‘Torino Shadow,’ AI, and Why Cinema Still Needs You in the Room

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Naman Ramachandran

See All Jia Zhangke Asian Film Awards

The idea for “Torino Shadow” came to Jia Zhang-ke not while he was making a film, but while he was avoiding one. Exhausted from wandering the Museo Nazionale del Cinema in Turin, he would sink into a chair in the vast central lobby and simply listen to the voices drifting from the surrounding galleries, absorbing the atmosphere of the museum.

“The starting point was to understand cinema from the perspective of an audience member, a cinephile – not as a filmmaker, but as a film lover,” Jia tells Variety through an interpreter. That distinction – between the professional who makes films and the person who needs them – sits at the heart of his 32-minute Cannes official selection short, which mk2 films is handling for world sales.

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Originally reported by Variety