FESTIVAL GUESTS

FESTIVAL GUESTS

The East Asia Film Festival Ireland brings key film talents from East Asia to Irish audiences whether this is through our cinema screenings, commissioned online interviews or hosting in-person visits.

This year, we are delighted to welcome two special guests to the festival: Chinese filmmaker and writer Agnis Shen Zhongmin, and Chinese producer Ziyang Lin.

Agnis Shen Zhongmin will take part in a Q&A session following the Irish premiere of her debut feature, SHANGHAI DAUGHTER to open the festival on Thursday, March 19th at 18.15 at IFI Dublin, hosted by award-winning Irish writer, filmmaker, and theatre director, Alan Gilsenan.

Agnis will also take part in a conversation event on Wednesday, March 18th (exact time TBC) at Trinity Centre for Literary + Cultural Translation, Trinity College Dublin about her writing work, her inspiration, and how translation has been involved in the process of translating into English her book, DEEP SIMULATOR. Booking link and event details available soon.

Ziyang Lin will take part in a Q&A session following the Irish premiere of the docufiction The River that Holds our Hands directed by Jianhang Chen, on Saturday, March 21st at 15.45 at IFI Dublin - host TBC.

AGNIS SHEN ZHONGMIN

Agnis Shen Zhongmin (aka Ag, b. 1985, Shanghai) is a filmmaker and writer. A graduate of Tongji University, she is the author of three short story collections. She has a cross‑boundary background in art, literature and film. Her debut feature, Shanghai Daughter was selected to world premiere at the Panorama section of the Berlinale International Film Festival 2026.

ALAN GILSENAN is an award-winning Irish writer, film-maker and theatre director. With a film and theatre career spanning almost forty years, Alan is one of Ireland’s most prolific and revered directors of drama and documentary film. His earlier work included two feature dramas and a brace of probing critiques of Irish society exploring disenfranchised youth; psychiatric institutions; hospices; old age; euthanasia and suicide; his latest documentary dealing with memory and trauma, The Days of Trees. Notable also are Gilsenan’s portraits of Irish artists and literary essays about Yeats, Joyce, Paul Durcan, Tom Murphy and Paul Muldoon; investigations of Irish identity and Irish independence; and historical profiles of figures such as Patrick Pearse, Roger Casement, Noël Browne and Eliza Lynch. He is a former Chairperson of the Irish Film Institute, a member of the boards of both Screen Ireland and Ireland’s national broadcaster RTÉ. He has also recently been appointed Chairperson of Fighting Words, a national organisation that facilitates creative writing for children & young people.

ZIYANG LIN

Ziyang Lin is a film producer and a master’s student in Food Studies at the University of Exeter. He has long explored the multiple roles of food in both everyday life and on screen. His producing credits include the feature docufiction The River That Holds Our Hands (2025), which received the Asian Cinema Post-Production Fund in 2025 and premiered at the Busan International Film Festival. The project was also awarded the Asian New Director Award at Eye Catcher Global in 2024. An earlier short film version of the project was funded by Maritime Guangdong in 2003.

HOST TBC