I Was Just Wondering With Tom Salmon S2 Ep 7: Kindling

Hello everybody, what’s up? You’re listening to I Was Just Wondering With Tom Salmon! The podcast that dives into music, film and games and everything else in between.

My guest on this week’s episode is Xinyi Zhu who directed her latest short film Kindling (2020) starring Jill Renner and Nicole Falk. The film tells the story of childhood best friends Piper and Celeste, who are forced to reassess their relationship as they drive across America to a small-town abortion clinic.

We jumped into Xinyi’s experience growing up in China and falling in love with filmmaking by secretly watching films on her iPod Nono, how studying psychology at UCLA influenced her approach to storytelling and what’s it like writing a new feature film screenplay in the era of Covid-19.

You can checkout Kindling and Xinyi’s other short film projects on Vimeo right now at https://vimeo.com/xinyizoo