Born and raised in China, now London based animator Qianhui Yu grapples with climate change and food wastage in her RCA school film Wastopia.
Foods become candy-coloured, playful characters who express their feelings in a sarcastic challenge to recognise issues of our environmental pollution. Qianhui first came up with the idea after watching live Mukbang videos - a novel trend of entertainment started in 2010 in South Korea, now worldwide, where an audience gets excited by someone stuffing themselves with food. It was then that she realised the need to address her own food wastage as well as the world's.
Yu “I started to think what if the wasted food and garbage have feelings? Then we would really think about what we threw away. The issues of waste disposal and food waste are just one of the ways mankind is causing harm and leaving the earth ruined. However the devastating result of the pollution is something most people don’t see every day, but it is happening in real time, all the time.”
"The world is depressing sometimes, dive into cinema therapy with me."