In the years following the pandemic, many artists have turned to personal memory and loss to reflect on a period marked by separation, uncertainty, and emotional disruption. The short film I Lost My Passport enters this conversation through a restrained and deeply personal approach. Written, directed, performed, and edited by Huiyu Zhou, the film centers on grief, displacement, and psychological suspension during lockdown, using a quiet formal language to convey an experience of distance that could not be resolved in real time.

Huiyu Zhou holds a double major in Design and Cinema & Digital Media from the University of California, Davis, and earned a master’s degree in film editing from Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts. A multi-award-winning filmmaker, Zhou focuses on stories that amplify underrepresented voices and explore the complexities of modern identity. With training in both storytelling and technical editing, she brings emotional sensitivity and formal control to her work. Themes of family, resilience, and the challenges women face in today’s world recur throughout Zhou’s work and take on especially personal weight in I Lost My Passport.

Set during the COVID-19 pandemic, the film follows an international student living abroad through nearly two years of prolonged lockdown. As borders close and daily life narrows into repetition, she becomes increasingly cut off from home, from ordinary movement, and from the people closest to her. During this period, she learns that her mother has fallen ill and passed away. Unable to return and face this loss in person, she remains suspended within a grief shaped by distance, delay, and emotional isolation. This absence gives the film its central emotional force.

The film has also gained recognition on the international festival circuit. On December 7, 2025, I Lost My Passport was named a Finalist at the Cannes World Film Festival, received an Honorable Mention for Best Short Film at the Eastern Europe Film Festival, and was recently officially selected for both the Knoxville International Christian Film Festival and the Indie European Cinema & Screenplay Festival. These distinctions situate the film within a broader independent festival landscape and underscore the wider resonance of Zhou’s intimate and experimentally structured approach.

The film unfolds at a deliberately slow pace, echoing the stagnation of life under lockdown. Its non-linear structure and experimental editing create a temporal space in which memory, waiting, and repetition coexist. Time in I Lost My Passport is felt as much as it is measured. Emotional time folds into physical time, and the structure of the film reflects the difficulty of processing loss while trapped inside an extended present.

This approach is closely tied to Zhou’s own understanding of the project. I Lost My Passport is described as something closer to a self-portrait shaped by life in quarantine. The film draws from the experience of living alone during isolation and carries the emotional atmosphere of that period: sadness, fragility, and a hope that has not fully disappeared. That atmosphere is central to the film’s language. Zhou’s investment in mood is one of the film’s primary foundations.

I Lost My Passport was made using phones and a basic Fuji camera, a choice that carries particular weight within a filmmaking culture where equipment, formal sophistication, and screen aesthetics often receive intense attention. Zhou places greater weight on inner feeling, atmosphere, and the relationship between the storyteller’s emotional state and the work itself. In her account of the project, storytelling begins with the heart before it becomes a matter of camera language. This perspective helps unify the film’s mood, structure, and emotional focus. Its stripped-down form supports its clarity and keeps the viewer close to the vulnerability at its center.

At its core, I Lost My Passport is a film about separation that cannot be repaired and grief that unfolds across borders, time zones, and memory. Through a restrained visual language and a deeply interior structure, Huiyu Zhou has created a work that preserves the emotional texture of isolation with clarity and care.