Lu Xiao Wei: From former Taiwanese ballerina to London filmmaker

"Every time you go watch a movie, in the credits — everyone’s a man. It just never came across my mind that I could one day be a filmmaker.”

— Lu Xiao Wei

Lu Xiao Wei is a queer female filmmaker in London. She’s directed campaigns for brands including Nike, Depop and Audible. However, her journey began in a very different world. 

Growing up in Taiwan, Lu trained for 11 years to be a professional ballet dancer. Her first memory is of her mom taking her to ballet class at the age of four. 

Her childhood was a cycle of school and ballet class. Upon graduating junior high, she successfully auditioned and joined a ballet institution - and then realized this career was not for her. 

“I think I kind of always knew I didn’t want to do ballet,” Lu said. “It was a really toxic environment, especially for a young girl.” 

As the ballet institution was an all-girls boarding school, Lu described the constant pressure to be perfect and the extreme training.

“You just practice from 7 or 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. They monitor your weight every day. It was very common for people to have bulimia and everyone had this really twisted idea of what perfect should be,” Lu said. “And that’s essentially why I decided to quit because I realized this is not for me. I don’t want to constantly feel bad about myself.” 

However, some of the classes which focused on choreography and directing inspired Lu to consider a creative career behind the scenes. At 17, Lu quit ballet and joined an art school, choosing a visual communication design course. Afterward, she became a graphic designer for a year before realizing this wasn’t for her either, as she craved more freedom when creating visuals. 

In 2011, she made the decision to study in London. 

“It was probably one of the best decisions I’ve made for myself. London is great in that sense it really helps give you the freedom to explore and it’s so diverse,” Lu said. 

Lu studied an MA course at Goldsmiths where she started to experiment with film. She described her journey as “very DIY,” learning how to edit, assemble a film, create visual effects and more on YouTube. She began collaborating with friends who were fashion designers and stylists and needed fashion films.

Originally, she didn’t believe filmmaking was available to someone like her due to the lack of representation.

"Every time you go watch a movie, in the credits — everyone’s a man. It just never came across my mind that I could one day be a filmmaker,” she noted. 

Lu Xiao Wei (center) on set for Instagram. (Photo by FAMILIA)

Breaking into the film industry was tough. After graduating, Lu applied for role after role as a runner or production assistant. However, the industry was (and still is) white-dominated, and she found herself always losing out to someone that was white and British. 

“It made me want to give up because I was like ‘maybe it’s not for me.’ Because I can’t be white, I can’t change!” she laughed. “At one point I thought, ‘If this is the industry, then maybe I don’t want to be part of that.’”

Still, Lu created her debut short film, “The Filial Daughter,” which was a documentary following the women who work as professional funeral mourners in Taiwan. It was a very low-budget project, almost entirely self-funded, but it kickstarted her filmmaking career. The film was the official selection for the LA Asian Pacific Film Festival, an I-D feature, part of the Baesianz Online Film Festival and more. FAMILIA, a production house, became her agent and Lu has been directing and creating work since. 

But as a self-taught filmmaker, does Lu deal with imposter syndrome?

“A hundred percent,” Lu admitted.

“I think it’s from my background,” she continued. “As a ballet dancer, you’re constantly being told you are not good enough. But also it’s just an Asian parenting style — you are always being told that you need to be better. And I think that’s so deeply ingrained in the back of my mind and I needed to unlearn that.”

The imposter syndrome paired with how the industry creates artificial scarcity of opportunities for women of color, resulted in Lu overworking herself.

“As a non-white, non-British, non-male director, you are constantly being put under pressure because you won’t be given that many opportunities,” she said.

Lu has noticed tokenism in the industry, and she hopes it moves beyond focusing on certain communities as “trends.”

A still from Luna Li’s music video for “What You’re Thinking.” (Image courtesy of Lu Xiao Wei)

“One year it’s the queer community, and then the Black community and right now the Asian community seems to be a trend now. The ideal world is no trend, where we’re not chosen because of certain labels and we’re seen for our talents,” Lu said. 

Lu takes care to ensure tokenism doesn’t happen on her projects. She uses what power she has to uplift her own and other marginalized communities at every opportunity. 

“As a director, you do have some power. For example, the people I work with, the people I hire, my crew, it’s inclusive. It’s diverse. It’s not being unfair to certain people,” she said. 

“I’m just quite stubborn because I really can’t do something that’s against my moral standards and beliefs. My community is so important to me, a lot of people are my support network so I would never want to work on something that I know is not right,” she affirmed.

Lu finds comfort in her community. Since she moved to London completely alone, she used social media and online platforms to find people from similar backgrounds and have faced similar challenges. Returning to and uplifting her community is how Lu is resisting artificial scarcity and toxic environments.

“It’s one battle at a time,” Lu said.