One’s life is shared. We are always in relationship with one another whether out of affinity or hostility. Child and parent, friend or enemy, para-social relationships—to be human is to be a companion to others.

We hide the truth, we desire, we manipulate, we seek approval, we are burdened by guilt. Can one ever act truly independently of others? I’m hard-pressed to think of an instance from my life when I did not act out of some consideration for another person.

Yet there comes a time late in life when one decides to go the rest of the way alone. The end of life is a universal experience, but it is hardly ever examined. It is when our aging loved ones become unknowable to us. We try to persuade them to rest because we are perfectly able to take care of them. But refusing our help, they keep secrets from us.

Lan’s Garden is a film about the end of life due to aging. Lan was once the proud matriarch of her family, and she defined herself by her ability to care for her children. Now, the arrangement of care has reversed: Lan’s children must come to take care of her, and fix what she breaks.

Lan is neither sick nor injured, and there is no dramatic plot point that leads to her downfall; she is simply growing old. If she suffers, it is only at the consequence of her own actions as she resists the reality of her aging. Every character in this film is a sympathetic one, and we take turns seeing Lan through each one’s eyes: the heartbroken daughter, the devoted son-in-law, the fascinated grandson. And then we are left with Lan, alone in her world.

It is a common experience, the visit to grandma’s, but what happens after you leave? We made Lan’s Garden to honor the solitary journeys of our aging parents and grandparents, which we can only witness from the outside. I suspect that contained in the minute and the mundane—in the ordinary processes of life—are vast and complex internal universes, and beauty.

Our witnessing, by the way, is an act of love. This film was made by seven inimitable crew members. Our champion cast consisted of a local Chinese American family—the leading actress, Lan Miao, is an inspiring and empowered woman whom I deeply admire, and who acted with grace through all our practical effects. We shot in the otherworldly garden of a local Chinese grandmother in North Carolina, as well as in the actual garden of Lan Miao. We worked amid the swelling choruses of cicadas that are so immediately symbolic of hot and humid summer days in the South. I got to re-watch the films that made me fall in love with cinema, including Nobody Knows and Totoro.

We all, at times, make it difficult for the people who love us, to love us. An aging parent's refusal to accept reality and the child’s frustration are parallel acts of love. Ultimately, this is a film about love. We made Lan’s Garden because we love our parents and our grandparents—even if we’ll never truly know them.


With love,

Jennifer Ru Zhou
Writer, director & editor
Lan’s Garden



















︎ / ︎ / imdb