Chinese Star Fan Bingbing Addresses Her Big Screen Return In ‘Green Night’

After a tumultuous few years, Fan Bingbing returns to the silver screen in Green Night, which premiered in the Berlinale’s Panorama section. Acting opposite Fan is Korean actress Lee Joo-young, who was part of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Broker last year.

Green Night is director Han Shuai’s second feature-length film and is set in South Korea. It tells the story of two women who meet at the airport, where Fan’s character, Jin Xia, is a Chinese immigrant working at a security checkpoint. The China-Hong Kong co-production then takes a darker turn, as the two women try to escape from the violent men in their lives. Han graduated from the Central Academy of Drama in Beijing and her debut feature, Summer Blur, premiered at the Berlinale in 2021.

“I’ve seen the director’s work before and was really impressed,” said Fan, on why she chose to act in Green Night. “When I received the screenplay, I really loved it and thought that the role is something that I’ve never tried before.”

“Before I read the screenplay, I didn’t realize that over 50 percent of my lines would be in Korean. I was really worried that I wouldn’t be able to do it well enough so I worked really hard with a Korean teacher to get the pronunciation right,” said Fan, on her preparations to play the role.

“The difficult thing about my role was how the character’s emotions were very repressed. She was more timid, almost a little bit lost and unsure where she was going next,” said Fan, reflecting on her character.

Director Han admitted it was an “impulsive” decision to make a film with her two lead characters speaking in different languages in the story, which led to some challenges during production. However, Han was grateful that many crew members were bilingual in Mandarin and Korean, so they were able to communicate her vision.

“Making this project was like a tornado — things moved so fast,” Han said. “I took ten days to write the first draft of the screenplay. When I arrived in South Korea, I spent three months on refining and editing it. We shot the film in three days. This day last year, we were shooting in Korea.”

On her decision to set the story in Seoul, Han said that the city is very cinematic and has many visual layers and dimensions. “It has very modern, yet some really traditional aspects. Another deciding factor is Seoul’s very impressive night scene.”

Lee’s character remains un-named in the film and is credited just as “Green-haired Woman.” Lee shared that there was actually a scene where Jin Xia calls her character by name, but this scene was later removed from the final cut. “I wanted her to be more mysterious, so remaining un-named allowed her to be more symbolic,” director Han shared.

“I was initially fearful in taking on the role, but was very touched after receiving a handwritten message from Fan Bingbing,” Lee said. The message said that Fan very much wanted to work with Lee, and assured Lee that she was the right one for the role.