Chinese-born British novelist, memoirist and film-maker, who explores migration, alienation, memory, personal journeys, feminism, translation and transnational identities.

Xiaolu Guo grew up with her illiterate grandparents in a village of fishermen, then with her parents and brother in the city of Wenling, both in the Chinese coastal province of Zhejiang. Her father was a traditional landscape ink painter and her mother was a Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution. She published her first poetry collection in her teens while studying ink painting. In 1993, she left her province to study at the Beijing Film Academy (in the same class as Jia Zhangke) and later on studied Documentary Directing at the National Film and Television School in the UK. She moved to London in 2002 and has lived in Paris, Zurich and Berlin.

Guo's 2004 film is "The Concrete Revolution", a film essay about the construction workers in Beijing building stadiums for the 2008 Olympics. It received Grand Prix at the International Human Rights Film Festival in Paris, 2005 and Special Mention at Chicago Documentary Film Festival.

Guo's 2006 film, "How Is Your Fish Today?" , inspired by Alain Robbe-Grillet's "Trans-Europ-Express" (1966) is a docu-drama set in modern China, focusing on the intertwined stories of two main characters; a frustrated writer (Rao Hui) and the subject of his latest film script, Lin Hao (Zijiang Yang). It was selected for the Official Competition at Sundance Film Festival 2007 and Rotterdam Film Festival, received Grand Prix at International Women's Film Festival in France.

Guo's 2008 film, "We Went to Wonderland" is a black and white essay film focusing on two elderly Chinese communists who arrive in the rundown East End of London and comment the Western world from their astonished Chinese perspective. The film which premiered at the Rotterdam IFFR was immediately picked for the New Directors/New Films Festival of the MoMa / Lincoln Film Society in New York.

Guo's 2009 feature is "She, a Chinese", a homage to Jean-Luc Godard's "La Chinoise". This film won the Golden Leopard at the 2009 Locarno International Film Festival and the Best Script Award at the Hamburg Film Festival 2010. It has been distributed in the UK, France, Spain, Germany and Switzerland.

Guo's other 2009 film, "Once upon a Time Proletarian", is a sister-film to "She, a Chinese". This documentary looks at China in the post-Marxist era. It premieres at the Venice Film Festival 2009 and has been shown at Rotterdam IFFR and Sheffield Doc/Fest.

Guo's 2011 fiction feature, "UFO In Her Eyes" is a cinematic adaptation of her novel of the same title. The film stars Chinese actress Shi Ke and German cult figure Udo Kier and is a political metaphor recounted through the transformation that befalls a small Chinese village after an alleged UFO sighting. Inspired by Soviet cinema, Xiaolu Guo dedicated this film to Soy Cuba, a banned 1964 Soviet-Cuban film directed by Mikhail Kalatozov.[10] It received the Public Award at Milan 3-Continental Film Festival 2013.

Guo's 2013 film, "Late at Night, Voices of Ordinary Madness", focuses on Britain's underclass society, each fighting their ground in their own way. It is the second part of Guo's Tomorrow trilogy, continued after her documentary Once Upon A Time Proletarian. It premiered at the 57th BFI London Film Festival 2013 and Rotterdam Film Festival 2014, and was exhibited at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

Guo's 2018 documentary feature "Five Men and A Caravaggio", is inspired by Walter Benjamin's landmark essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1936). It premiered at the BFI London Film Festival 2018 and the Athens Avant-Garde Film Festival in Greece 2018 (Source:wikipedia) Edit Biography