Drifting, South: The economics behind a Chinese film's international win

As Drifting, South, a 16 mm short-film directed by Chinese director Zhang Di, has just won the Winner award in the Short Film International Competition at Riga International Film Festival 2025 in Latvia, its true story may be economic — a micro-budget project that turned damaged footage and a missing scene into an overseas cash-point.

With jurors praising its "fleeting connections", Drifting, South focuses on the brief intersection of three marginalized figures on Xiaobei Road in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, but witnessed its unnoticed pivot being made in post-production by Chinese editor Yuntong "Hazel" Dai, now Los-Angeles-based.

Dai, whose "narrative reconstruction and tech repair" is being considered to have re-energized China's arthouse sector, replaced re-shoots with "post directing" and swapped expensive global sharpening for artificial intelligence-assisted local repair.

Her workflow is already being imitated by Chinese film editors as a low-cost insurance policy against gaps, defects, and festival deadlines.

The RIGA IFF trophy gives the film potential overseas sales heat and raises the international exposure of director Zhang (whose previous project was already Venice-selected) and her team.

The film once had a production crisis, as two narrative scenes were never filmed. Conventional reshoots meant re-blocking locations, rehiring actors, and blowing the already tiny budget.