Huilan Xu is a screenwriter and director born and raised in steaming, humid southern China. Originally a self-trained manga artist, she quit the industry she never entered at 15. After happily drawing over a decade, still a story yapper, she switched gears to filmmaking. With a Canadian high school diploma, she moved to the United States pursuing a BFA degree in Film, Photography, and Visual Arts at Ithaca College in freezing Upstate New York. She dedicated her time to experimental filmmaking, conceptual photography, skimming international relations politics, and studying Italian Renaissance art abroad in Italy as if she’s not abroad already. Upon graduation, she worked as an education consultant in Shanghai, China for her field research where she collected horror stories and came of age as a young woman. She later moved to Los Angeles and is currently a MFA candidate in Film and Television Production at University of Southern California, specializing in drama and YA comedy. 

 

Her photographic works have been exhibited in group or solo shows at Handwerker Gallery, Park Gallery, and Gimme! Coffee. Her screenwriting work, Winter Glass Glare (2021) was selected in several film festivals including Rhode Island International Film Festival and CINEQUEST Film Festival and went on winning several awards including Best Student Film in Top Shorts. No press has named her any sort of genius yet, and she’s working on it.

 

She has traveled around the world to more than a dozen countries and speaks English with an accent she can’t help drifting. Having spent her entire childhood in a factory and witnessing the rapidly growing Chinese economy first hand, she’s devoted to telling social realism stories that are so absurd and impossible you can only cry or laugh about, and she hopes to do both. Her life devotions will be independent filmmaking and money lobbyist. 

 

Lastly: Her biggest fear is frogs; her favorite color is green. She relishes a contradiction. 

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B.F.A. Film, Photography, and Visual Arts, Ithaca College, 2021

M.F.A. Film and Television Production, University of Southern California, 2027

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Email: huilanxu324@gmail.com​