Shuning Zhao (Saeu) is a filmmaker and moving image practitioner currently based in Ireland. Her work spans documentary, and experimental moving image, with a particular interest in how images mediate time, memory, and perception.

Her practice engages with meta-cinema and hybrid forms, often combining documentary and fictional strategies to reflect on the act of filmmaking itself. She is interested in reflexivity, the instability between reality and representation, and forms of identity shaped through displacement and in-between spaces. She often works independently across directing, writing, shooting, and editing, developing a process that allows for a close and intuitive engagement with image and rhythm.

Her recent works include Cut & Run (2024), a meta-fiction short reflecting on the act of filmmaking; Macau Fists (2025), an observational documentary following Macau’s only professional boxer and his coach; and When Images No Longer Carry Time Naturally (2026), an experimental film investigating the relationship between temporality and digital image culture.

Her practice is grounded in an ongoing dialogue between making and thinking, approaching film not only as a medium of representation, but as a way of questioning how we see, remember, and situate ourselves within images.