After filming "Heart Labyrinth" 10 years ago, which was regarded by Xin Yukun as the first and last film in his life at that time, he first passed all the way at the First Youth Film Festival, winning two awards for Best Director and Best Feature Film in one fell swoop, and since then he has been out of control on the road to winning awards, winning the Golden Horse Award for Best Original Screenplay and Best New Director nominations, participating in 17 international A-category film festivals and winning a number of international awards. After the second film "Bursting Silence", the theme is the story about miners and mines that he has always wanted to make, and because of strong financial support, whether it is photography, art, sound effects, and casts, it has been greatly upgraded, for Xin Yukun, this is a work with no regrets. After that, there is now the third movie "Hot Search". He still filmed the subject matter he has always been eager to shoot, no regrets, no compromises, and focuses his perspective on the hot searches on the Internet that are closely related to the present, just like Xin Yukun said, "What has happened on the Internet in the past few years is the power of awakening, and it is necessary to be recorded and transmitted." 
An absolute victory
In 2018, the movie "Burst Silent" was released nationwide. The first stop of the roadshow was in Beijing, and after the film was screened, Xin Yukun and other main creators came to the stage to communicate and answer questions from the audience. The audience who was the first to ask a question stood up and said, "Director, I am a big fan of yours, and I especially like your previous "Heart Labyrinth". But I don't like "Burst Silent" very much this time, I didn't expect you to make such a movie, if you continue to make such movies in the future, then I won't fan you. After speaking, he put down the microphone and walked out of the theater.
Although he didn't think that he had made a so-called "bad movie" and betrayed the audience, the audience's fierce reaction still caused a great shock to Xin Yukun's heart, so much so that for a long time after "Bursting Silent", he fell into a strong contradiction. "I would start thinking: what does the audience like?Am I going to shoot something that the audience likes?Then I realized that I thought about more than a dozen things I wanted to shoot, but they all had their own problems, and suddenly there seemed to be nothing I could shoot, so I didn't dare to move forward. At one point, I wanted to 'indulge' a little more, but I didn't want to do that, so I made something that I thought was particularly fun and interesting, and then made a movie for myself, and went back to the beginning. However, after careful consideration, I found that there were still very big difficulties, and I was unable to move forward. ”When he got the script of "Hot Search", Xin Yukun said that he actually had a feeling of finding a "life-saving straw" - this theme is what he has always wanted to shoot in his heart, and the audience may also resonate. 
For many years, the idea of filming the story of ** practitioners has been haunting Xin Yukun's heart. At first, his idea was very conservative, wanting to shoot traditional print media or TV**, but with the endless hot events on the Internet over the years, the hot searches on the Internet have fueled the fire, and everyone can participate in it, and even make a conclusion for the whole event. In this process, some events are constantly reversed, and the messenger of self-feeling justice may become a keyboard warrior who participates in cyberbullying at some point.
Xin Yukun focused the lens on self-esteem and Internet public opinion. He wanted to present a hearty absolute victory, which was decided before the shooting, "I strongly wanted to shoot the confrontation between the weak and the strong, the awakening power of kindness and justice." So the editor-in-chief of the movie, after learning the truth, tried his best to speak up for the ** girl, opened an invisible online ** battle, and finally won.
"The truth is not a little girl who can be dressed up, but has her own strong vitality." The movie "Hot Search" is like a mirror reflection of the current Internet ecology, everyone in real life is facing various online public opinions every day, and the first thing many people do when they wake up in the morning is to open Weibo and brush the hot search of the day. In the face of the massive network**, whether it is sober enough and does not blindly follow the trend is something that everyone needs to reflect. Many times, words can be the last straw that breaks the camel's back, or they can be a ray of light to save the weak. Xin Yukun hopes that this film can reach the hearts of the audience, so that everyone can use another angle to watch those online public opinions after watching it, and it would be great if they could still gain some strength and confidence from it.
No regrets, no compromises
Xin Yukun was born in Baotou City, although this is an Inner Mongolia city, but it is actually quite far from the grassland, and in his opinion, it is more like the Northeast industrial city in the movie "The Piano of Steel" or Shuangxuetao**. Growing up in a single-parent family, he was an introvert since he was a child, his mother was a bank clerk, and no one in his family worked in the film-related industry. Xin Yukun has liked to read books and watch movies since he was a child, and dropped out of school in his second year of high school to study directing at Xi'an Film Training School, which was opposed by the rest of the family except his mother. Xin Yukun said that he has not been particularly persistent or stubborn since he was a child, "I think I am quite easy to give up and compromise, including being a director." But fortunately, along the way, he got the support of the two women behind him. One is a mother. When my mother wanted to be a soldier when she was young, she didn't do it, and she knew that she had a dream but didn't try to realize the feeling of regret for life, so she fully supported Xin Yukun's movie dream, "Sometimes I want to back down, but she told me that I can hold on a little longer." The other is a lover. Before filming "Heart Labyrinth", he stayed at home for a year without going to work to cook and write scripts, and invested the last penny of the family in post-production, but his lover never complained, but always encouraged him positively and optimistically, and gave him advice. In Xin Yukun's heart, the image of women is great, inclusive, and tenacious, and it is also because of the influence of these two important women in his life on him. 
In mid-November 2023, half a month before the national release of the movie "Hot Search", after the end of an early viewing event,Xin Yukun and his lover drove home and passed by the Third Ring Road, and with the old song in the car, the two chatted about 10 years ago. At that time, the two had just gotten married, Xin Yukun's feature film "Heart Labyrinth" had just been filmed, and they often passed by the Third Ring Road, but they didn't know if they could continue to stay in the city in the future, and whether the dream they were pursuing would have results in the future.
Ten years later, the two not only stayed in Beijing, but also made a career, had his own studio, and moved to the park near Gaobeidian;Own yard with toon, catalpa and willow trees and cute dogs;In the conference room was the chalk drawing that the butcher's son's son had drawn on the wall in "Cracking Silence". I am still making my favorite movie, and I am still the same person by my side, and the two of them support each other along the way. Thinking of this, the hands of the two unconsciously clasped together. Looking back, Xin Yukun thought that the feeling at that moment should be happiness.
Well-being also stems from being more self-consistent. After filming "Hot Search", Xin Yukun felt as if he had reconciled with himself, and he didn't seem to be so twisted about filming what he liked or what the audience liked. "I am especially grateful to the audience who said they didn't like Burst Silent at the time, thank you for your attention to my work, and thank you for your trust and expectation in me. But, I'm sorry, there's really no way, a director must firmly believe in his own creative outlook. At least so far I haven't compromised for any reason, and I'm confident of that. ”Q-Beijing Youth Weekly.
A-Xin Yukun.
qIt has been 10 years since you made the feature film "Heart Labyrinth" in 2013, has your understanding of the word "director" changed?
aIn fact, I feel that the job or profession of directing seems to be getting more and more difficult for me. When I was filming "Heart Labyrinth", I was "the ignorant are fearless", and when you are noticed by everyone, there will be a kind of pressure and constraints. "I would start thinking: what does the audience like?Am I going to shoot something that the audience likes?I was actually a little dazed for a long time during this process. So you can see that in 10 years, counting "Hot Search", in fact, I only made three and a half works (one of which has not yet been completed), which is definitely not a high production.
I once read a book that said: When a movie is blockbuster enough and public attention, it has nothing to do with film art, but has become a social hot event. I think it makes a lot of sense. So in this way, I suddenly realized that if you really have a lot of people watching a story, the message it can convey is very important. This made me suddenly feel that the profession of director still requires a strong sense of social responsibility.
Once I think about it like this, I unconsciously start to have a lot of so-called burdens or burdens, and I start to hesitate, not knowing what to shoot, what kind of subject matter to choose, and what kind of story to tell.
qDo you read reviews online?
aWill see. Because we can draw strength from everyone's comments, we can also see the audience's perception of the work, including whether the content of some stories will misinterpret the audience, if so, then we may need to find an appropriate time to interpret the real meaning.
For example, I saw such a comment about "Hot Search", because when "Burst Silent" was released before, the metaphors in the film included eating meat, which is a point that everyone is willing to interpret, so after watching "Hot Search", the protagonist played by Zhou Dongyu in the film drinks coffee in the metaphorical class, and then says that this metaphor is not accurate, because this coffee machine is not very expensive. But in fact, our design does not think like this, and it has nothing to do with class. In "Hot Search", there are many coffee-related scenes, including the montage of the process of making a cup of coffee and Internet information mixed together at the beginning of the film, which is actually a metaphor for modern people's social interaction.
*The demand for information is the same as being addicted to caffeine - drinking a cup of coffee every day, brushing social ** every day, and participating in hot attention and discussions, people will unconsciously fall into it. So at the end of the film, the heroine faced the coffee handed over by her brother and said: Quit it!
qWhat kind of review would make you the most happy?
aThen I definitely hope that the audience can understand some of the design in the film, understand what I want to express, and I hope the audience can interpret it. Because many things can't be directly clicked by the characters, you need to use the expression of the movie, and you have to superimpose a lot of shells, so if the expression is shallow, it may not look good, and if the expression is deep, it may be easy to understand or be misunderstood, I think this is normal. But I still want what I'm doing to be interpreted by the audience.
In fact, since I started making "Heart Labyrinth", my original intention has always been for the audience, and the entire structure of "Bursting Silence" is also something that the audience can quickly substitute and understand, but the shape of the whole story is not like that of ordinary genre films. Just now you said that "Hot Search" is a commercial film, and I have not hesitated or struggled in this matter. So when making a movie for the audience, audience feedback is important.
qWhat do you think of the word "style"?How would you describe or summarize the "Xin Yukun style"?
aIn fact, in the process from "Heart Labyrinth" to "Bursting Silence", I had a stage where I wanted to find my own style, and I hoped to continue and expand my style. After all, many of the directors I like have their own styles and contexts. But then I found out that my two works are different in style from the audiovisual aspect, and there seems to be no style at all in terms of subject matter. So what exactly should my style be?The word "style" seems to have become a sharp blade hanging over my head, which makes me entangled.
Later, I thought it was because I didn't shoot too much. The style must be unconscious. Once you feel that you have to shoot with this style of lens or light and shadow, it is actually not right. So maybe for me, this question can't be answered now, so I can only continue to shoot, maybe one day in the future everyone will find out my so-called "style", but this needs to be handed over to the audience and time.
qCan you recommend a movie or book that you watched recently?
aThe movie that has seen the most impressive recently has to be "Wading Through the Angry Sea" directed by Cao Baoping. Director Cao Baoping has always been a director I particularly like, and I have always paid close attention to his films. "Wading in the Sea of Wrath" has been brewing for many years, and it is conceivable that it should be very powerful, and after reading it, I was really shocked.
Many scenes in the film are impressive, and director Cao Baoping has found the crazy temperament of the whole film, the theme is also crazy, the people are crazy, and the things are crazy. Especially in the scene of chasing the car, there is a rain of fish in the air, which seems to be the externalization of the character's inner madness, which is really a stroke of genius.
As for the book, I was recently reading Kevin Kelly's The World in 5000 Days. When Keanu Reeves was filming "The Matrix", he didn't know what he needed to do, and the director Wachowski brothers gave him Kevin Kelly's particularly famous "Out of Control" and told him: You can read this book three times. Kevin Kelly has always been concerned about the impact of cutting-edge technology on society, life, and even international politics, thinking about where we will go in the future, and many of his predictions have indeed come true later. qWhat do you expect from yourself in 2024?
aI don't know if it's because people are middle-aged, the perspective of seeing many things has changed, and now I feel that "inward" expectations are more important than "outward" expectations. I hope that I am more self-consistent, and I think that when a person is self-consistent enough, understands himself clearly enough and is calm enough, all external changes can actually be dealt with.
I sometimes think that maybe many of the problems I have encountered in the past 10 years, whether they are external problems or internal problems, are still because I don't know myself very well, and those contradictions or conflicts will arise. If you know yourself well enough and are self-consistent enough, most of the problems will be solved. 
Edited by Han Haha.
Wen Kangjuo. Portrait photography by Lee Young-moo.
Material** provided by respondents.