Cathy Yan’s debut film, “Dead Pigs,” premiered to critical acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival in 2018, where it won a Special Jury Award for Ensemble Acting, and garnered numerous awards throughout its festival run. She followed it up with 2020’s “Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn),” starring Margot Robbie as the titular character Harley Quinn in the first-ever female team-up comic book film. Directing this film made her the first Asian woman to direct a studio superhero film and only the second female to ever direct a studio superhero film. Yan previously worked as a reporter for the Wall Street Journal in New York, Hong Kong, and China. She was born in China and lives in New York.

“Dead Pigs” will be released globally on MUBI February 12.

W&H: Describe the film for us in your own words.

CY: This is a deeply personal story years in the making. “Dead Pigs” is a reunion of sorts — a way for me to better understand my birth country, a place that has enthralled and confounded me ever since I left it in 1990 at the age of four.

In my lifetime, China has undergone such immense change, lifting close to a billion people out of poverty amidst the fastest urbanization in world history. But there is another side to this massive transition. Deng Xiaoping’s famous words – “To get rich is glorious!” – have compromised everything from food safety to the environment to the souls of its citizens. All this made contemporary China a fascinating, exaggerated, complicated, ridiculous, and wonderful setting for my first film.

I made “Dead Pigs” in 2017 and it premiered at Sundance in 2018. To my surprise and glee, it was well received. But the film had a hard time finding a distributor willing to bet on a predominantly Chinese language indie from an unknown director.

In the years since — and what a few years it’s been — a new world is upon us. “Parasite” won Best Picture, #MeToo swept through a dysfunctional Hollywood, and my second feature, “Birds of Prey,” released just before a global pandemic and a summer of intense racial reckoning. Suddenly, there was this acute realization among many Americans that Gordon Gecko’s famous words — “Greed is good” — has compromised not only the environment and its citizens, but the very soul of our nation.

Four years after I made “Dead Pigs,” this is another type of reunion. By examining my past, the film has actually become a prescient lens for our present and future — not just in China, but in America and around the world. All around us, the conflict between those who move forward and those who get left behind has never seemed so pronounced.

“Dead Pigs’s” five main characters come from all walks of life, ranging from a rural pig farmer to an American architect. Yet, they are more alike than they are different — all lost among the shuffle, full of ambition but without a way to get there, just trying to stay afloat against the currents of change.

Like these characters, we have all felt displaced and isolated. In these crazy times, when everything feels so far apart, when differences are amplified between fathers and sons, cities and towns, wealthy and poor — what are the things that connect us? When everything is changing so quickly, what are the things that don’t? And in our moments of dark nihilism, of which I’m sure we have all experienced of late, what happens when you keep pulling at the edges until the threads start to tear and there’s nothing left?

“Dead Pigs” doesn’t offer any straight answers, but it is hopeful — as I was hopeful, and am still hopeful — that while forces larger than any individual will keep pushing us down and along and away from each other, the sun will shine again, the birds will fly and the people will come together, even if for one brief moment, even if just to sing a song.

W&H: What drew you to this story?

CY: I wanted to make sense of my dual identity as both Chinese and American, and I was fascinated by China and the massive change it was undergoing in my lifetime. The immediate inspiration was the dead pigs incident itself. I felt it to be both deeply cinematic and amazingly symbolic.

W&H: What do you want people to think about after they watch the film?

CY: I don’t like telling them how or what to think! I just hope they feel something and that the themes and characters could stay with them a little after the film ends.

W&H: What was the biggest challenge in making the film?

CY: This was my first feature, so basically everything. But most of all, trying to shoot it in China with an international cast and crew, with the logistics and inevitable miscommunications around that.

W&H: How did you get your film funded? Share some insights into how you got the film made. 

CY: “Dead Pigs” was financed entirely by Chinese companies, including Alibaba Films. It took about three years to get the financing and what really helped it was getting Jia Zhangke to sign on and executive produce it. It lent it the credibility we needed.

W&H: What inspired you to become a filmmaker?

CY: I grew up watching movies that still have a big impact on my work. I was an only child so I would watch and rewatch my favorite films. At the same time, as a former journalist and dance choreographer, I’ve always thought how fun it would be to take what I learned about storytelling from journalism and movement from dance into filmmaking.

Directing is such a wonderful catch-all for everything I love, from working with actors to cinematography to costumes to music.

W&H: What’s the best and worst advice you’ve received?

CY: Worst advice: I was once told by an agent in Hollywood to add some sci-fi to my “Dead Pigs” script because “sci-fi is really hot right now.”

Best advice: Patty Jenkins reminding me that a director knows the movie better than anyone.

W&H: What advice do you have for other female directors?

CY: It’s pretty much inevitable that we will be underestimated, judged more harshly, and deemed more “difficult” at some point in our careers, so don’t get too affected by that crap and focus on defending your vision and your art.

W&H: Name your favorite woman-directed film and why.

CY: So many! Maren Ade’s “Toni Erdmann” is definitely up there. It’s just spectacular: strange, unexpected, intimate, and deeply human.

W&H: How are you adjusting to life during the COVID-19 pandemic? Are you keeping creative, and if so, how?

CY: This moment — or many moments — to breathe has actually been incredibly helpful for my creativity. I have cherished the ability to focus on what matters and to write and develop unburned by industry pressures and the usual goings-on that are mere distractions from the work itself.

I’ve been developing and writing a lot with my producing partner, Ash Sarohia, and forming our new production company, Rewild. This year has allowed me to hone in on exactly what sort of stories I want to tell from the ground up.

W&H: The film industry has a long history of underrepresenting people of color onscreen and behind the scenes and reinforcing — and creating — negative stereotypes. What actions do you think need to be taken to make Hollywood and/or the doc world more inclusive?

CY: This is an institutional problem that must go far beyond just placing more people of color behind and in front of screens. They actually have to be encouraged to do their work and pursue their visions throughout the process, and to have their careers supported with empathy.

I think we’re still at the tokenization stage of this change. We need to hire more women and people of color in positions of power/gatekeepers who actually get things made — not just writers and directors, but executives, studio heads, producers, etc. Systems need to be in place to ensure our rights are protected — and that workplace discrimination has an easy and protected way to be identified and eliminated.

On screen, we need to create characters that are real, complicated human beings that are protagonists — and antiheroes — of their own story.