Twenty-six-year old filmmaker and photographer Yuxuan Ethan Wu was born in Changsha, in China, and has lived in Beijing, Boston, New York, and Palo Alto. Since graduating from the Emerson College (in Boston), he has worked on different films as assistant director and cinematographer. His debut directorial feature Death Education premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. The short documentary follows a Chinese teacher who offers his students an immersive death experience – a film that “braves the subject material experientially and with an unpretentious philosophical attentiveness”.

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Joshua Polanski – You are a very young director. In fact, I think you are the youngest director that I’ve ever interviewed. Why is mortality on your mind at such a young age?

Yuxuan Ethan Wu – [laughs] For some reason, my parents sent me to school a year earlier than most of my peers, so growing up, I was always the youngest (and often shortest) kid in the room. In a way, that made me stop thinking about age when interacting with others – it gave me a bit of naive confidence when I first started working as a documentary director. I never really felt nervous or intimidated when talking to or interviewing people.

I don’t know how common this is for kids, but as a child, I often feared something happened to my parents or family. Looking back, my earliest memory of this was in primary school – waking up in the middle of the night, wide awake from a nightmare where my grandpa had passed away. I’m very fortunate that all my close family members are still with me today, but I still fear… that day.

JP – The film begins in a crematorium as a corpse is being turned to ashes. What was it like shooting in a place as serious and somber as a crematorium? How do you maintain respect while the camera is running?

YEW – I think talking about respect in this context means asking myself why am I filming these images in the first place? Am I using these visuals purely for shock value or sensationalism? Intent matters.

The day before class, I visited the public cemetery for the first time. It was a cloudy morning, and there was a light drizzle. Standing there, surrounded by hundreds of tombstones, I saw names engraved in stone, words marking family heritage – a connection to the living, a record that they were once here. But around the corner, there was a large, empty pit. On the tombstone, it just read: Tomb of the Unnamed. Knowing that this pit would be filled with red bags the next day, I stood there, feeling something in the air I couldn’t quite articulate. In a way, that feeling became the essence of this film.

JP – How did you first become aware of this teacher and his interesting class on death?

YEW – I first read about Teacher Qian and his class in an article back in 2022. Kinda immediately, I knew I wanted to film this story. Death education isn’t a new thing, but most of it remains in the form of lectures or presentations. In this context, words felt powerless. Teacher Qian and his students are doing something entirely different. Their goal wasn’t to teach about death through words but to let students experience the concept of death – something that can only be truly understood through the emotional embodiment of physical presence.

JP – Did the pandemic and your personal experience living through the pandemic influence the themes of this short?

YEW – Because this event only happens once a year, I jotted down the idea in my notebook and waited a year to film their stories. It was during that one year of waiting that my personal experiences shaped my intention behind why I was making this film. My grandma got really ill because of Covid and was in the hospital for months. It was the first time in my life that I felt so close to the fear of death. I watched my close friend go through grief after the unfortunate passing of his grandparents and saw the weight it put on his shoulders. When I was editing narrations, I was also conscious of the shared experience everyone has gone through in the past few years and I felt a sense of urgency to get the film out there. Even though none of these experiences are part of the film, they shaped why I’m making it and influenced my approach—one that invites contemplation and engagement from the audience.

JP – The student excerpts ended up as the narrative voice of the film. Was this always the plan? What moved you about their writing?

YEW – Yes, that was the plan from the beginning! Instead of conducting interviews with them, I recorded students reading selected passages from diary entries they wrote that night. This was a formal choice to create intimacy since I knew the film would be about portraying the perspective of the students – not so much about the information per se. To me, it’s really about how they are reading these passages that brings me into their shoes, going through the journey with them.

Tone matters, and we speak very differently when talking to others versus sitting down in a room reading something. Slowly, it almost becomes as if they are talking to themselves—and that felt intimate.

JP – You use a patient, almost quiet style of filming. Can you walk me through this stylistic decision?

YEW – I was looking back at my pre-production notes from two years ago, and I had written “Detachment vs. Intimate” and “Abstract vs. Personal.”

Overall, it’s all about perspective. I filmed the day’s events handheld, using a longer lens on the students to emphasise closeness – saying, in this film, we are with the students. At the cemetery and crematorium, the camera remains static in 0rder to create sincerity – almost a detached way of looking, removing any subjective framing to make space for audience contemplation.

I want the film to function as a simple gesture, offering a window into this world and saying, look.

JP – What was the most challenging aspect of the production?

YEW – Post-production was definitely the most challenging aspect – editing, specifically. I aimed to create a meditative film that doesn’t rely on information or dialogue. However, I kept fighting my old habits from working in the news media documentary realm, where information is king. I had a lot of self-doubt about whether the film could sustain interest with its longer takes or how much context was enough. It was a long process of sculpting the transition from the abstract to the personal and finding the true emotional tone of each moment.

JP – What is one thing you learned about death and dying that you hope people will take with them after seeing your film?

YEW – It’s hard to say what I learned because I don’t think there are any answers in this, nor is the film trying to find one. However, one thing I do know is that even though this is a film about death, to me, it’s about living – about looking back on our own lives.

A filmmaker I respect said something to me after watching an earlier cut of the film that perfectly summarised what I hope people take away from it: “It made me reflect on loss in my life and the need for ritual. It left me with a mild sadness because death is. Loneliness is. And yet… all worth living.”

JP – What’s one thing you learned on this project that you hope to bring into your next project?

YEW – Honestly, the Sundance premiere and seeing the audience’s reactions to the film gave me the confidence boost I needed to trust myself and keep making films the way I envision them. Like I said, I struggled a lot during editing – especially with making my own decisions without worrying too much about audience expectations and reactions.

I made this film from a personal place, and in turn, audiences engaged with it and responded from a personal place. Through the medium of film, we were able to have a serious conversation that we might not have had otherwise. This is what I strive to do in all my future projects.

JP – What’s next for you?

I just wrapped filming for another short documentary this past January and now going into editing. It’s a story about parents of autistic adults in China – they have an ultimate fear and anxiety – what will happen if they pass away one day? Who will take care of their child who can’t be independent, when society has failed to provide well- established, systematic support? The film follows a mother, now in her early 60s and planning her own retirement, preparing a future for her autistic child – a future when she is no longer in this world, and the film unfolds from here.

Maybe looking at finishing that film this summer? I will try my best.

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Yuxuan Ethan Wu is pictured at the top of this interview. The other image is a still from Death Education.