"Elizabeth Lo's Mistress Dispeller centers on a middle-aged wife and husband, the latter of whom is having an affair that the former is desperate to end. Enter Wang Zhenxi, one of a growing number of China's professional "mistress dispellers." For a fee, Teacher Wang will orchestrate scenarios that allow her to get to know the man and his mistress in order to discern how she can best manipulate a breakup - one in which all parties hopefully emerge for the better."
"Making Stray - my first feature doc told from the perspective of stray dogs as they wandered through the city of Istanbul - was a revelatory experience because it exposed me to a culture completely foreign to my own. Spending months immersing myself in Turkish culture challenged and deepened my understanding of interspecies urban life, and I loved that widening of my worldview."
Mistress Dispeller follows a middle-aged wife who hires Wang Zhenxi, a professional 'mistress dispeller', to end her husband's affair through carefully orchestrated encounters. Teacher Wang stages scenarios to meet both the man and his mistress, assessing how to manipulate a breakup that ideally benefits everyone involved. The documentary interweaves planned deceptions with genuine emotional consequences, portraying the ethical and interpersonal complexities of engineered separations. Director Elizabeth Lo approached the project after immersive documentary work in Istanbul and intentionally set the film in mainland China to explore cultural dynamics and personal roots while blending observational and constructed filmmaking methods.
Read at Filmmaker Magazine
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