

Festival Season:
January 2026
FIRST ENCOUNTER

Directors:
Writers:
Anna Wang
Anna Wang
Producers:
Cynthia Sun
Run Time:
0:12:13
Awarded for the following Category(s):
Awarded Category(s)
The story begins when a traveling painter meets a beautiful waitress in a roadside diner, falling into a dreamlike vision of love and life. Within this fleeting illusion, he experiences an entire lifetime with the heroine—embracing the sweetness of love, enduring the trivialities of daily life, and confronting the weariness of marriage. When he returns to reality and is once again given the power to choose, he must decide whether to continue alone, savoring the freedom of solitude, or, despite remembering every moment of past pain, still choose to journey with her. In this question of life, what will the protagonist ultimately choose…

Submitter Statement
Anna Wang is an emerging director specializing in romance. From a female perspective, she explores transformation and reconciliation in relationships via nuanced storytelling and visual craft, creating aesthetically striking and emotionally resonant works.
Key Cast
Palina Leonchenko "Monica "
Jonathan Barcelos "Mark"
Other Credits
Director of Photography: L.chen Yu
Editor: Hugo Sun