The Digital Void: How “Zoom In, Zoom Out” Explores the Absence Within

The latest offering from Chinese director Dong Jie, “Zoom In, Zoom Out,” premiering at Venice Critics’ Week, tells a seemingly esoteric tale of a missing roommate. However, scratch beneath its surface and you’ll find a probing exploration of our relationship with technology, community, and ourselves.

Dong’s protagonist Shi is a young game designer searching for his missing friend Gao. This inquiry into the fragments of their digital lives – chat logs, game avatars, memory – reveals Dong’s fascination with absence: not just Gao’s physical disappearance but also the voids within Shi and YY, the other characters.

Dong argues that our hyper-connected world has created an environment where we’re more inclined to focus on what’s missing than what’s present. We only begin to care about someone after they’ve disappeared; it takes a void to reveal the depth of our emotions towards others. This delayed reckoning is particularly reflective of how we relate to one another in our digital age.

The film uses a homemade game to tell its story, deliberately opting for an authentic, lived experience over spectacle. The rough-hewn aesthetic and mechanics of the avatars create a sense of intimacy between characters – it’s easier to sense the person behind the controls, and the emotions invested in the game.

This rejection of spectacle is a commentary on our relationship with technology. We’ve grown accustomed to experiencing the world through screens; we curate our online personas, hiding behind avatars or carefully crafted profiles. Dong’s film suggests that this curated version is often a pale imitation of reality – and that it’s only when we confront the voids within ourselves that we can begin to understand others.

Dong himself notes, “We are often ashamed to talk about jealousy, but to me, it is one of the most universal and authentic emotions between people.” This emotional recognition transcends love or sexuality; what it reveals is our deep longing for connection – and the voids that inevitably arise when we’re unable to fulfill those desires.

The Venice premiere marks a significant milestone in Dong’s career as a director. His film also speaks to a broader cultural context: China’s younger generation, caught between an increasingly individualistic society and a tradition of collectivism. Dong describes this spiritual outlook as one of “contradiction” – people are preoccupied with the self, yet still yearn for meaning, morality, and emotion.

In our era of technological transformation, we’re forced to confront our own existential voids. “Zoom In, Zoom Out” offers a vision of hope, albeit a cautiously optimistic one. By treating the digital world as part of everyday life rather than an escape from it, Dong invites us to live with technology in all its complexity.

This call to reclaim our emotional lives means acknowledging that meaning can be created through living with others, even when technology has transformed our relationships. It’s a message that resonates beyond the screen; it speaks to a world where we’re increasingly disconnected from each other but still desperate for human connection.

Ultimately, Dong’s film is less about a missing roommate than about the voids within ourselves – and the connections we make when we confront those absences head-on.