Queer Festival Winner Short Film Explores Longing and the Things We Can’t Translate

Earlier this month, Jeremy Tianyu Chi’s brief movie Ice Cream, Ice Queen took house the Best Short Film award at the International Queer & Migrant Film Festival in Amsterdam—together with a trophy that, in becoming queer vogue, occurred to be an iconic chrome butt plug. However the honor was greater than only a cheeky flourish. Jeremy’s intimate, atmospheric brief has resonated throughout borders, with audiences praising its emotional subtlety and the uncommon tenderness with which it treats connection, queerness, and cultural dissonance.

Shot in New York, the movie explores an unlikely encounter between two immigrant girls on a chilly winter’s night time. What begins as small speak deepens into a fragile emotional trade—one the place what’s left unsaid speaks louder than dialogue. “It’s a story about two people who are both lonely in different ways,” says Jeremy.

The movie screened at Amsterdam’s iconic LAB111 cinema, a favourite amongst indie movie lovers. It was curated by Berlin-based Chinese language filmmaker and European Movie Academy member Popo Fan. One viewers member later wrote to Jeremy: “The gentle sadness and also cultural gaps you depicted were so sensitively beautiful.”

The movie leans into language not simply as a software, however as each a barrier and an intimacy. One character speaks Korean, the opposite Mandarin, and their conversations usually teeter between readability and misfire. “After the Amsterdam screening, this Chinese girl messaged me,” Jeremy recollects. “She said she really loved the film and recommended it to her friends, but also felt a little sad because most of the Dutch audience couldn’t fully grasp the emotion and nuance in the lead actress’s Chinese lines. And I told her, that’s actually part of what the film’s about: the inability to fully communicate between languages.”

Because the supervising editor and sound designer, Jeremy didn’t shrink back from these moments. He let the untranslated language reside in its personal emotional rhythm, shaping scenes round silence and hesitation. A second that stood out was when Annie, the youthful lady, nervously asks, “Does it make you feel gross (that I am a lesbian)?” and Rosemary, the older lady, replies, “What is… gross?” It’s awkward, honest, and surprisingly humorous. And the viewers laughed.

To Jeremy, Ice Cream, Ice Queen feels significantly private. “It was inspired by a time when I was having late-night calls with my mom almost every other day,” he says. “I think I wrote two versions of us into the film without realizing it.” The result’s a quiet movie that pulses with restrained intimacy, held collectively by Jeremy’s exact enhancing and sonic consideration.

“If someone walks away feeling less alone in their own strangeness,” he provides, “that’s really all that matters to me.”

Ice Cream, Ice Queen will proceed its competition run this yr, with upcoming screenings throughout Asia and North America.