2025 Student Academy Award Winners Series Part 10: The Song of Drifters

The Song of Drifters, dir. Xindi Zhang

The Song of Drifters is a poetic and experimental animated documentary that captures the voices and emotions of a generation constantly in motion, of young people who drift between places, unable to settle, yet carrying with them an evolving and sometimes contradictory sense of home. Through the overlapping voices of eight interviewees and an evocative hybrid visual style, the film explores what it means to belong when permanence is elusive.

The film opens with serene imagery like trees swaying in the wind, a train platform, the quiet moments of waiting, reflecting the emotional landscape of its subjects. “I believed I’d live and work in Kunming until I retire,” one voice says, full of melancholy. But that life didn’t happen, and this sense of uprootedness sets the tone for The Song of Drifters. The film moves fluidly between the stories of those who left and those who stayed, painting a collective portrait of displacement and spiritual connection that transcends geography.

Visually, The Song of Drifters is striking and highly experimental. The film often fades between animation styles, sometimes using rotoscope-like sequences, at other times resembling papier-mâché collages, with layered textures and fragments evoking memories or dreams. Zhang allows some details to remain clear and specific, such as clothing or interior spaces, while others, like faces or backgrounds, remain intentionally blurred and nearly abstract. This contrast mirrors the drifting nature of memory and identity: some moments are sharply defined, while others are intangible and fading.

One haunting sequence shows an empty wheelchair veiled in black, like a funeral shroud, symbolizing absence and loss in a deeply personal way. In another, furniture shifts or moves on its own, empty chairs moving through an aimless tour of a living room suggesting the ghosts of people who’ve left, or who never truly arrived.

Technically, the film is as innovative as it is emotionally resonant. Completed as part of Zhang’s work in USC’s Expanded Animation Research + Practice program, the project blends AI-generated art with traditional 3D animation and live-action footage. Zhang built a custom generative pipeline and integrated her own illustrations as a style guide, maintaining artistic control even while exploring the capabilities of AI. The process involved rendering scenes in Blender, breaking them into passes and morphing them using a mix of abstract and figurative elements to reflect the dreamlike narratives of the interviewees. The result is a visual language that mimics the sensation of a half-awake dream: shifting, unstable, and full of emotion.

What’s most compelling is how Zhang uses this experimental pipeline not just as a technical exercise but as a mode of self-reflection. Though she interviews others, the film clearly mirrors her own experience navigating cities and identity. Despite AI being used for over 90% of the visuals, Zhang insists (and convincingly proves) that the soul of the work remains her own. The use of AI doesn’t dilute her voice; instead, it amplifies it, allowing her to render internal states and psychological landscapes that traditional methods alone might struggle to express.

In the end, The Song of Drifters is not just about physical displacement but about emotional and existential drift. The layering of voice, image, and memory creates a collective song of yearning and resilience. Zhang's film doesn’t offer a neat conclusion about belonging, but instead finds beauty in ambiguity, in the shared, fragmented experience of being unmoored yet still reaching for meaning.

Review by: Joshua Hunt