Fantasia Fest: Baby, Don’t Cry interview with stars Zita Bai & Vas Provatakis and producers Qiyu Zhou and Zeron Zhao

1428: One thing I noticed about the film, I know you guys pulled from Chinese mythology, folklore and used animal symbolism. You have Fox, and correct me if I’m wrong, but pig noises were being played in the scenes with Baby and her mom? What went into adding those animalistic features into the film?

Zita: For sure. I think the fox element goes back to the Chinese mythology about fox because I’m going to speak Chinese [speaks Chinese phrase] translates, to like a foxy personality, meaning someone who will steal your soul. We wanted to reverse the stereotype because why are women only seen as foxy? Especially for Baby. She’s 17, and here comes this boy, and he really turns her upside down.

Zeron: Her environment was unfamiliar with those situations, so what she sees in the world, through her eyes, it’s animals around her.

Zita: And going back to the pig element, what feels real, especially as a 16-year-old, at least for myself, I didn’t speak English for a long time, so when people spoke English around me, all I heard was animal noises. I started to identify people with animals.

1428: Zita and Vas, I’m curious how you relate most to your characters and how you differ most from them?

Vas Provatakis: Great question. I differ from Fox in many ways. I’m a lot more patient, and I have a lot more understanding of people’s feelings than he does. I think I relate to him in that Fox has a profound need to give love to other people. But there is a difference in that because he doesn’t know how to give it, so it kind of manifests as anger and frustration and grabbing what he wants instead of being respectful and patient.

Zita: I guess Baby is who I wanted to be when I was her age. I feel she’s more brave and independent in a lot of ways even though she was bullied in school, but she’s confident in her craft, and I shared the same passion as Baby because I always wanted to move to L.A. to be a filmmaker.