Repro Uncensored is proud to be supporting It Must Be Because I Decided to Leave, a film by Zhuoyun Chen. Premiere TBD soon.
As a filmmaker working between cultures, Zhuoyun Chen brings a rare and necessary lens to questions of identity, belonging and autonomy. Her work draws from diasporic memory and the lived experience of navigating gendered expectations across borders. It Must Be Because I Decided to Leave is not only a deeply personal exploration of selfhood, it is also a cinematic meditation on the quiet weight of familial ties, displacement and the search for meaning as a woman living in between worlds.
At Repro Uncensored, we recognize that reproductive justice must center stories like Zhuoyun’s, stories shaped by migration, cultural fragmentation and the intimate ways people negotiate identity and care outside dominant frameworks. Her film resonates with our broader mission to uplift voices that are often sidelined in both the arts and reproductive rights spaces.
This is a film that invites us to slow down, to feel and to sit with the ambiguities that so often define womanhood and survival. Stay tuned as we announce the premiere and continue spotlighting cultural work that expands what reproductive justice looks and feels like across borders.
It Must Be Because I Decided to Leave (2025)
color, 16mm, 18:40min
A film by Zhuoyun Chen
Synopsis:
The film unfolds as a visual diary, tracing a young woman’s day in a city far from home as she unravels the mystery of a red car—lured by a dream of being pursued along a desolate hill path at night. Portrayed by multiple faces, her gestures are imbued with romanticized detail, while her fantasies take shape in cryptic objects. Memories of love and family resurface in texts, monologues, and playful exchanges with her dog, Oliver, slowly revealing the quiet longings of a drifting daughter searching for herself through shifting identities, within which lies the enigmatic red car.
Director’s Statement:
This film emerges from my fascination with fractured identities and the ways they surface in our most intimate relationships. It invites viewers into the drifting consciousness of a young woman as she wanders a city far from home. Her search for the elusive red car—a dreamlike symbol of her lost self—unfolds through layers of memory, fantasy, and small, yet tender moments.
Portrayed by multiple faces, the protagonist exists in a state of flux, her romanticized gestures echoing the fragmented nature of her experiences. Her journey is marked by cryptic objects and playful exchanges with her dog, Oliver, revealing an inner world shaped by a longing for connection and the weight of familial ties.
In this fluid narrative, the visual language embraces ambiguity, offering space for personal interpretation. The red car, a specter of reflection and desire, serves as a thread linking the dreamscape of her subconscious, her lived reality, and her unspoken search for belonging.
Ultimately, this is a portrait of a daughter piecing together what lies between past and present, between what is lost and what remains.
Repro Uncensored is honored to stand behind artists like Zhuoyun Chen, whose work expands the narrative of reproductive justice through poetic and deeply personal storytelling. We believe that creative expression is essential to resisting erasure and to building a future where all identities, all longings, and all forms of autonomy are seen and honored.