Cynthi will be present at the Festival de Cannes 2026, having advanced to the second phase of the Short Film LAB of the Film Talent Academy after pitching her project at the Linz International Short Film Festival 2025.
She will pitch her Short film project, developed within the LAB under the guidance of leading industry mentors, at the Cannes Film Festival. She will present her project in a networking session with producers of New Producers Room organised in collaboration with SFC | Rendez-vous Industry of the Festival de Cannes.
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Cynthia Lin
A Funeral Procession of Fireflies
30’ Fiction
Genre: Drama
Country of production: China, United States
Biography:
Cynthia Lin is a filmmaker and visual artist exploring diasporic memories from the Chinese rural south. Drawing from her experience as a "satellite baby" raised in Fuzhou until age five, she crafts magical-realist ghost stories that echo the absence of family. Lin studied film at Yale University and has trained at FAMU in the Czech Republic and EICTV in Cuba. In 2023, she was selected for The Gotham Film and Media Institute's project development and pitch program, and she is currently in the Linz Film Talent Academy developing A Funeral Procession of Fireflies.
#LinzISFF #FilmTalentAcademy #Cannes2025 #SFC #linz #ResidencyInCannes #FilmResidency #YoungFilmmakers #FilmNachwuchs #CannesVibes #CreativeVoices #ShortFilmAcademy #Filmförderung #NextGenCinema #InternationalCinema #KreativerAustausch #Filmtalente2025
Friends!!! We are 220 followers away from qualifying as a finalist for Seed & Spark’s AAPI Rally — and a chance to match funds up to $12,500 and pitch at TIFF.
Following is free. All you need is a Seed & Spark account (you can sign up with your Google account in seconds). Then click FOLLOW. That’s it.
We have 1 week left and every single follower counts. If you’ve been meaning to support our film, this is the easiest way to help. And if you’ve already followed, thank you, and please share this post! We appreciate you~
LINK IN BIO or Google “seed and spark funeral procession of fireflies”
friends!!! it’s been a week & we’ve reached over 40% of our goal 🤯
thank you for believing in us 🫶
🧚 also, we’ve made our film IG @fireflies.film ! pls give it a follow
𓇼 graphic design (as always) by @daheun.o
It was 2024, Cynthia and I were going through some production prep together. During a casual chat, she mentioned the term “satellite baby.” That was the first time I had ever heard it. Cynthia was smiling, trying to make her experience sound lighthearted, almost funny.
But that day has never left me. I saw a beautiful sadness shimmering behind that smile, and it stayed with me.
Last year, when the chance came to dive into a story based on that mysteriously sad smile, I said yes without a second thought. Now, I am lucky and proud to say that as her producer, I am officially a part of this story.
Now, I sincerely invite you to become a part of this journey as well.
Currently, we are participating in the @seedandspark AAPI Rally to raise additional funds for the film. Please check the link in our bio to learn more about our project. If this resonates with you, we would be so grateful if you could help us repost and share this story with more people.
Your support helps us bring this untold story of Fuzhounese people in NYC — and by extension, all Chinese immigrants — out into the world, after being carried in silence for decades.
I grew up with two sets of parents.
One raised me — fed me, held me, walked me to kindergarten. The other existed as a voice on the phone and money in the mail. I was five when I learned which ones were “real.”
Children like me are called “satellite babies.”
🧚 A FUNERAL PROCESSION OF FIREFLIES is the film I’ve been trying to make ever since — a magical realist drama set in 1990s rural Fuzhou, where two sisters wait for a smuggler’s boat to their mother in the U.S. Only one will board.
We’re making this film in the Fuzhounese dialect — and we need your help to get there.
🌀 Link to our Seed&Spark campaign in bio
🌬️ Share far and wide — and if you can, donate. Every little bit brings this story closer to the screen.
𓆦 𓆙 𓇼
written & directed by @c.ynlin
produced by @weijia.zhou_
co-produced by @daheun.o@monayz
executive produced by @sahraa_karimi
graphic design by @daheun.o
always grateful to the @barryfellowship for the incredible support and for giving me the time and space to do this for the year ✨
& so excited to be pitching this @marchedufilm with @linz.international.short this May… more to come…! (one day I will actually post news on time…!)
& check out the other AAPI Renaissance Rally projects @seedandspark and @goldhouseco ❤️
Photographs made at @andersonranchartscenter workshop led by @barbarabosworthstudio and @emilysheffer in Aspen, Colorado & notes.
- In Aspen, the air is smoky from the fires, and dry. It rained on the last day. But we were in the basement, and by the time we surfaced, the only sign of it was its lingering smell.
- My earliest memories are of watery passages and tunnels, the sound of rain and firecrackers, the itchiness of mosquitoes, molding wooden tables, and the press of wet air.
- Spirits as watery presences.
- Grandmother’s grave in Fuzhou is overgrown with tall grasses and swallowed back into the landscape. We didn’t return for her funeral. And now I’ve become obsessed with what I had missed.
- For the first 7 weeks, or 49 days, the spirit may not know that they’re no longer among the living.
Hi friends! A piece of mine has been up @yalepeabodymuseum made in @lrkur photo class and the Peabody’s fabrication shop, imaging studios, and entomology collections. It’ll be up until sometime next fall. Thank you Andy, Andy, Sydney, Nicole, my classmates, and the Grace Hopper Creative and Performing Arts Award.
I was thinking about museums and collections as an allegory for Noah’s ark; preserving for the future; insect specimens in a little diaspora of their own, traveling in collectors’ cigar boxes across borders; in-betweeness; preservation practices as acts of mourning that mirror the displacement inherent to diaspora; and the constant curation of these objects’ identities according to shifting cultural imaginaries.
resin, photographed insects printed on washi papers (𝘊𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘭𝘢 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘪𝘴, 𝘊𝘦𝘱𝘩𝘰𝘯𝘰𝘥𝘦𝘴 𝘩𝘺𝘭𝘢𝘴, 𝘈𝘳𝘩𝘰𝘱𝘢𝘭𝘢 𝘮𝘢𝘥𝘺𝘵𝘶𝘴, 𝘗𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘢 𝘧𝘭𝘢𝘷𝘦𝘴𝘤𝘦𝘯𝘴), Peabody cigar boxes, spirit money ashes, string, cotton, glycerin
Horse Island photo taken by Lisa!
𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘴𝘯𝘪𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘵𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘫𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘴 𝘢𝘵𝘮… first time back in fujian & china and felt so compelled to film, write, and create (late assignment finally turned in hahaha @yaleanimation ). meeting filmmakers who believe in filming as a way of life, process over product. convincing mama & baba to film themselves for a docu-series. thinking about co-creation, power, lens, and being away from university and this moment.
saw @didithemovie (!) at BIFF and tried to gauge if the myspace slang translated ok to the audience, reading 𝘤𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘦 by @isabelwilkerson & wished l’d read it sooner, missing friends so much. rediscovering alice coltrane.
𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘢𝘭𝘴𝘰 𝘣𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘢𝘪𝘱𝘦𝘪 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘥𝘰𝘤𝘧𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘴𝘰𝘰𝘯 𝘪𝘧 𝘧𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦!
