‘I don’t want to limit myself’: Venice winner Xin Zhilei joins Shanghai festival jury with eye on new horizons

SHANGHAI, June 13 — Chinese actress Xin Zhilei said she was keen for new experiences and did not want to limit herself, as she helped kick off the Shanghai International Film Festival yesterday.

Xin, 40, became only the third Chinese woman to win best actress in Venice in September, her first major accolade in Europe after charming audiences at home.

She will be part of a festival jury for the first time in Shanghai and joked at a news conference that she had asked Doubao, a Chinese AI chatbot, how to prepare for the role.

“I want to try everything I haven’t experienced before,” she later told AFP, adding she doesn’t rule out stepping behind the camera in the future.

“I don’t want to limit myself, nor do I want to box myself into a specific type... Anything is possible.”

Her Venice success came for her role in The Sun Rises on Us All, in which her character tries to make amends with a former lover who was jailed for a crime she committed.

The film was widely praised for the convincing, nuanced chemistry between her and co-star Zhang Songwen.

Asked about the challenges faced by Chinese film makers, Xin said good work would “always find its audience”.

“I truly feel that, whether in film or any other industry, we’ve entered an era where what’s false is being stripped away and only the genuine remains,” she said.

“I believe we each have to bring 100 per cent sincerity to our professions and to the work we love — only then might we have a chance to move the audience.”

Chinese actress Xin Zhilei speaks during an interview with AFP during the 28th Shanghai international film festival in Shanghai on June 12, 2026. Xin said she was keen for new experiences and did not want to limit herself, as she helped kick off the Shanghai International Film Festival yesterday as a jury member. — AFP pic

Desire and drive 

Xin’s first international break came in 2016’s Crosscurrent, a mystical romance set along the Yangtze River.

She has also starred in Chinese blockbusters and popular television series — notably 2023’s Blossoms Shanghai, directed by Hong Kong cinema legend Wong Kar-wai.

“When I first watched Crosscurrent back in the day, I didn’t really understand it — even as an actress in it,” she said.

“But years later, when I revisited it, I felt it was a truly great film.”

Xin grew up in China’s far north, near the border with Russia, in a family that struggled financially.

As her success grew, she was labelled online as someone “who wears her ambition and desire right on her face”.

Xin talked in a 2018 speech about the guilt she still feels having refused to buy her paralysed father a computer in the early days of her career, because of the cost.

“I admit I have a desire for money — because I never want to feel that regret again,” she said then.

Asked how her drive had shaped her development as an actress, she said “every person has... their own journey”.

“The reason I am who I am is precisely because I’ve gone through what I’ve gone through. And that has its own purpose.” — AFP