A star falls silent in August 2021—this is what rising sounds like.
The documentary marks the directorial debut of Chinese actor Zhang Zhehan, it documents his deeply personal journey of self-healing in the aftermath of a devastating cyber media storm in August 2021 that abruptly halted his acting career.
Direction
Zhang's debut reveals a visual storyteller born from necessity.
Cinematography
Tibetan landscapes shot like memory itself—hazy, vast, unforgiving.
Editing
Intimate phone footage collides with epic mountain silence.
Director
Zhang Zhehan
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
In China, 'August 2021' became shorthand for Zhang's cancellation after a nationalist social media campaign targeted him for photos taken at controversial Japanese shrines years prior.
Zhang shot most footage on his phone during actual isolation, making this one of few documentaries where the director-subject relationship collapses completely into raw self-documentation.
CN
