Li Anne Liew’s glide: a gentle ghost drifting through LA

Li Anne Liew is a Malaysian filmmaker working between tender melancholy and small cinematic surprises. Her new short, glide (all the people i’ll never be), follows Ophelia, a ghost who slips into the private moments of strangers in a sun-softened Los Angeles and mourns not what she lost but “all the lives she never will,” according to Directors Notes.

The film leans on texture. Directors Notes says it was "shot on 500T in available light," and Liew and DP Dajiana Huang used an ARRI SR3 and 1600 feet of Kodak 500T — one roll a day across four days — to capture wind, post-rain blues and the kind of light that turns concrete melancholy. Editor Aleia Jacobs and Liew kept coverage minimal, rehearsed heavily and cut sparingly so each frame carries the emotional distance at the film’s centre.

Ophelia’s perspective is shaped as much by sound as image. Composer Yoki Ng transforms a simple five-note hum — developed with actor Kallie Pong — into the ghost’s unreachable voice. Liew describes the film’s approach as an attempt at “natural observation with a supernatural funk,” a phrase she uses in the Directors Notes interview to explain the quiet, omniscient gaze that colours each vignette.

“the ache of being the one who watches, unseen.” — Directors Notes

The piece moves through a jetty, a river walk, a bookshop and a playground; interludes show funeral altars and the sea. Liew names Claire Loudis (AD) and Jess Stossel (producer) among the crew who helped schedule the tight shoot. She says the edit trimmed stylistic beats in favour of emotional clarity — even cutting a scene with a cat to preserve the mother–daughter connection.

glide premieres on Directors Notes. See the film and more of Li Anne Liew’s work on Directors Notes: directorsnotes.com/2026/08/12/li-anne-liew-glide/