Asian Shadows Acquires Lei Lei's Hybrid Documentary 'Vertigo Garden' Ahead of IDFA Premiere
Asian Shadows has acquired Vertigo Garden, a new feature from Chinese filmmaker and animation artist Lei Lei, Variety reported on 12 November 2026. The film will have its world premiere in the Envision Competition at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA).
The film is set at the Lushan Botanical Garden and follows the life of its botanist. It mixes three approaches: documentary footage, 3D animation and experimental techniques. Lei Lei wrote and produced it with Chai Mi, through See-Ray Studio Production, the animation and visual art company he founded.
Lei Lei began filming at the garden in his hometown in 2024, using an 8mm camera. For the screenplay, he cited Chris Marker's 1983 essay film Sans Soleil as an inspiration. Marker's film is known for its loose, travelling narration, and it has long been a reference point for filmmakers working with personal, image-led material.
Lei Lei holds a master's degree in animation from Tsinghua University. He taught experimental animation at CalArts Film & Video School and has been a professor at Tsinghua's Arts and Design Academy since 2022. His earlier work has travelled widely. His short Missing One Player won a Prix Ars Electronica and a Silver Dove at DOK Leipzig in 2015. His mid-length documentary Breathless Animals debuted in the Berlinale Forum in 2019. His first animated feature, Silver Bird and Rainbow Fish, premiered in the Tiger Competition at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2022. Vertigo Garden is his second feature.
IDFA has also nominated the film for the Beeld en Geluid IDFA ReFrame Award. The prize, named after the Dutch sound and vision institute, honours creative work that uses archival material.
Asian Shadows was founded in 2014. The company sells Asian films by Asian directors to buyers around the world. Festivals such as IDFA are where many documentaries first meet those buyers, so a premiere slot is often an early public step for a film like this one.
The next fixed point is the IDFA premiere itself, where the finished film will be shown for the first time in the festival's competition.
