Festival Season:
April 2026
CHECKMATE OF THE HEART
Directors:
Writers:
Lusha Li
Producers:
Run Time:
0:04:47
Awarded for the following Category(s):
Awarded Category(s)
After the death of his wife, Filippo’s life becomes an unwinnable chess match. When he tries to retreat from his grief, an estranged friend unexpectedly returns.
Submitter Statement
Lusha Li is a cinematographer and director whose work brings musical thinking into visual storytelling. With a background in music composition and image-making, her films often focus on systems of control, female subjectivity, and the fragile balance between tenderness and power within allegorical settings.
She has worked across film, television, and game production, and has trained under cinematographers Jacek Laskus, ASC, and Pascal Lebègue. Lusha is currently pursuing an MFA in Cinematography at the New York Film Academy. She previously earned a BA in Electronic Music Production from the Central Conservatory of Music in China.
Checkmate of the Heart began during a period when I was living with severe C-PTSD symptoms and trying to rebuild my life far from home. Coming to the U.S. for graduate school gave me distance, but it also brought long nights of fear, isolation, and the feeling that everything I knew had fallen apart.
That emotional reality shaped the film’s central character: someone who believes they have lost everything and can no longer see a way forward. Through this story, I wanted to explore what happens in the quiet moment when a life feels cornered, and how a single human connection, memory, or choice can shift the outcome.
This short film was created as my first graduate assignment. It is a small, personal attempt to translate invisible pain into something honest, cinematic, and ultimately human.
Key Cast
Other Credits