Céline Roustan
Beatrice has made specific arrangements to celebrate her son’s birthday. Unfortunately, her plans feel ill-omened from the beginning, when the bakery gives her a chocolate cake instead of strawberry. Difficulties both large and small, and the specific circumstances of her son’s situation weigh and tug at this mother’s emotional state throughout Year of the Dragon, writer/director Giran Findlay Liu’s deeply sensitive and tender portrait of a mother’s unconditional love and unfailing devotion for her son in the toughest times. Quiet, yet poignant in the extreme, the film is one of the most devastatingly affecting shorts of recent vintage.
Findlay Liu credits several inspirations for Year of the Dragon. First, he shares that he once saw “an elderly Chinese woman in the subway, carrying a bouquet of balloons with absolutely no expression on her face.” He confesses that he became filled with questions about her life, adding that, as the son of an immigrant mother, he grapples with guilt for all the sacrifices she’s made for him. Projecting his own experience upon this stranger, Findlay Liu wondered “what my own mother looks like when I don’t see her.”
Fiona Fu as Beatrice is in almost every frame, and her stellar performance lifts the film.
Liu’s portrait has a special elegance too—he does not hide key reveals but is parsimonious in handing them out, so audience realization slowly builds throughout the runtime. His love of Raymond Carver short stories is evidenced in this facet, while, stylistically and in tone, Lee Chang Dong’s film work, especially Poetry, can be felt.
Year of the Dragon is fundamentally simple in plot, and in that lies its power. Findlay Liu’s subtle and naturalistic approach is what makes the film so effective and affecting. The writing is engaging as it conveys to the audience just enough to captivate and intrigue us, creating a bond between the protagonist Beatrice and the viewers. By not revealing too much, as the day unfolds, the mystery at the center of the film builds up and we are able to grasp Beatrice’s emotional stakes.
Exquisite shots from DP Vincent Prochoroff are effective in communicating Beatrice’s fragile state.
With such a quiet film, editor Maria Bykina‘s role takes on heightened importance, and she crafts the perfect pacing for the short to provide room for the audience to process not only the plot’s explicit context, but also how Beatrice is feeling and reacting to the setbacks of her day. As we tag along on her journey, these setbacks, physical and emotional, accumulate, and with DP Vincent Prochoroff, the film does as good a job as any in recent memory at immersing us into the interiority of the character, through several careful and sublimely framed shots.
We’ve mentioned the film’s poignancy, and the good work of Findlay Liu and the team would have, ultimately, faltered without a stellar lead performance. Fiona Fu is a tour de force in what is a difficult, unshowy role, dominated by restraint. Fu dominates the frame and becomes the canvas upon which Findlay Liu, Prochoroff and Bykina masterfully build the film around, utilizing a varying mix of long shots and close-ups that allow Fu to showcase her talent in an impressively nuanced way. With very few lines, she delivers a performance full of strength, vulnerability, determination, and sadness. Present in all the shots, she is mesmerizing, her facial expressions alone carrying the weight on her shoulders, punctuating the film’s two back-to-back emotional climaxes.
Ahead of its online debut as a Vimeo Staff Pick, Year of the Dragon had its world premiere at the 2025 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival; it went on to be selected at multiple festivals including the Palm Springs ShortFest and won Best Live Action Short Drama and Best Performance in a Live Action Short Drama at the 2026 Canadian Screen Awards. Findlay Liu is currently developing his first feature, In the Winter of Breaking and Entering.