The Peabody Awards Nominee | JURY WINNER, DOCUMENTARY FEATURE - Austin Asian American Film Festival | OFFICIAL SELECTION - Tribeca Festival | OFFICIAL SELECTION - Doc Edge | GRAND PRIZE FOR DOCUMENTARY FEATURE - Heartland Film Festival | INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTARY GRAND JURY PRIZE - Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival | HIGHLY RECOMMENDED - Educational Media Reviews Online
Female Solidarity & Networks of Support in Ancient China • Preserving a Secret Script • Historical & Contemporary Marriage Practices • Feminism • Calligraphy & Poetry • Histories of ResistanceDate of Completion: 2022 | Run Time: 86 minutes | Language: Mandarin Chinese with English subtitles | Captions: Yes | Includes: Transcript | Directors: Violet Du Feng and Zhao Qing | Producers: Violet Feng, Mette Cheng-Munthe Kaas, Jean Tsien & Su Kim | Co-Producers: Tanja Georgieva-Waldhauer and Betsy Tsai | Executive Producers: James Costa, Ken Pelletier, Sally Jo Fifer, Lois Vossen, Jaeson Ma, and Inmaat Productions | Editor: John Farbrother
Women in China were historically forced into oppressive marriages and forbidden to read or write by their households for thousands of years. To cope, they developed and shared a secret language among themselves called Nushu. Written in poems or songs with bamboo pens on paper-folded fans and handkerchiefs, these hidden letters bonded generations of Chinese women in a clandestine support system of sisterhood, hope and survival.
Spanning between past and present, from sunken rice fields and rural villages to bustling metropolitan cities, HIDDEN LETTERS follows two millennial Chinese women who are connected by their fascination with Nushu and their desire to protect its legacy. In Jiangyong, Hu Xin works as a Nushu museum guide and aspires to master the ancient script following the breakup of her marriage. In Shanghai, Simu is passionate about music and Nushu, but marital expectations threaten to end her pursuit of both. Influenced by Nushu’s legacy of female solidarity, the two women struggle to find balance as they forge their own paths in a patriarchal culture steeped in female subservience to men.
Educational Media Reviews Online | Reviewed by Catherine Michael, Communications & Legal Studies Librarian, Ithaca College
"The film is highly recommended to those interested in international cultures, women’s studies, writing, and Chinese history."
Gloria Steinem
"A deep and wonderful rebellion."
Cherry Picks
"Fascinating... culminating in a powerful resonance that lingers."
The Black Cape Mag | Jonita Davis
"A magnificent portrait of women in China."
Documentary Magazine | Patricia Aufderheide
"Hidden Letters is an extraordinary film: masterfully conceived, strategically designed and highly crafted."
"Feng and Qing give us an uncommented but highly pointed close-up look at the contradictory meanings of Nushu today, from the perspective of the women they follow. They capture some extraordinarily revelatory moments, which need no parsing. The female participants permit them to capture their vulnerability, their insecurity, their doubts."
"Feng, who took lead as director, doesn’t pick sides, or demonize anyone for reinforcing patriarchy. Instead, she shows how systems reinforce it and engage everyone in participation, even those trying to resist."
Film Book | Thomas Duffy
"Hidden Letters is a movie that holds the viewer captive for the duration of the film’s running time. We can only hope we’ve evolved as a society (and as a world) after viewing these experiences of some very distinguished ladies."
Alliance of Women Film Journalists | Marilyn Ferdinand
"It’s hard to know whether the language of nushu will survive; clearly, its soul is in peril as men intrude with their crass money-making schemes. Fortunately, we have Hidden Letters to help us remember the creativity to be found in women’s struggle for survival."
The Austin Chronicle | Mazzy Oliver Smallwood
"If there is such a thing as 'female gaze' within filmmaking, Feng has captured it."
AWARDS
Jury Winner, Documentary Feature; Audience Award, Feature Film | Austin Asian American Film Festival
Grand Prize for Documentary Feature | Heartland Film Festival
International Documentary Grand Jury Prize | Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival
Best Feature Documentary Shortlist | 38th IDA Documentary Awards
Best Norwegian Documentary | Bergen International Film Festival
FESTIVALS
Tribeca Festival
Sydney Film Festival
Doc Edge
Sydney Film Festival
Travelling Film Festival
Lunenburg Doc Fest
Syracuse University Human Rights Film Festival
Tallgrass Film Festival
Doctober
BFI London Film Festival
New Haven Documentary Film Festival
Adelaide Film Festival
Mystic Film Festival
Vino Vérité
Muestra Internacional de Cine Indígena de Venezuela
Films from the South
DocPoint - Helsinki Documentary Film Festival
Millennium Docs Against Gravity Film Festival
Director and Producer of HIDDEN LETTERS, Producer of PLEASE REMEMBER ME
Director and Producer of THE DATING GAME
Violet Du Feng is an Emmy and Peabody-winning independent documentarian, a 2025 Guggenheim Fellow, and a 2024 Chicken and Egg Awardee. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences and an adjunct professor at the Journalism School of Columbia University. Violet directed and produced THE DATING GAME, which premiered at 2025 Sundance Film Festival World Cinema Competition and won the Best International Director at Doc Edge Film Festival. The film has been widely acclaimed throughout over 20 film festivals around the world. She directed and produced the 2023 Oscar Shortlisted, Peabody and Emmy nominated HIDDEN LETTERS which premiered in competition at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival, followed by twelve international festival awards and broadcast distributions in more than 15 countries. She directed PBS/CPB special program Harbor from the Holocaust with music performed by Yo-Yo Ma.
She has directed, produced, and executive produced 13 documentaries. Her producing credits include Night of Night (2024), which premiered in competition at CPH:DOX; Dear Mother, I Meant to Write About Death (2022), which received a Special Mention at Busan International Film Festival; Singing in the Wilderness (2021), a nominee for the Golden Alexander Award at Thessaloniki International Film Festival; Confucian Dream (2019), winner of a Special Jury Award at Karlovy Vary International Festival and the Chinese Academy Award of Documentary Film; Mainland (2017), winner of a Special Jury Award at SXSW and PLEASE REMEMBER ME (2015), winner of three awards at GZDocs with a successful theatrical release and impact campaign in China that resulted in policy changes. The film was awarded DocImpactHi5 of 2019.
Violet started her career as a co-producer on the critically acclaimed 2007 Sundance Special Jury winner Peabody and Emmy winner Nanking, which was distributed theatrically around 30 countries throughout the world, and was the highest-grossing documentary in China. Violet produces the forthcoming film Running With the Prime Minister. Violet has served as advisor for Sundance Non-Fiction Producing Lab, HotDocs Blue Ice Docs Fund and Chicken and Egg (Egg)ccelerated Lab. She is a consulting programmer for Shanghai International Film Festival. Born in Shanghai and based in New York, Violet holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Fudan University and received her MFA in journalism from the University of California at Berkeley.
Speaking History
Columbia University - Taught documentary filmmaking
School of Visual Arts - Taught documentary filmmaking
Other schools I've talked to: UC Berkeley, UCLA, Stanford, NYU, Cornell College, Hong Kong University, Oxford University, University of Iowa, University of Colorado, Rowan University and many more.
I've presented my films at UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, NCORE Educational Conference, International Documentary Association, Asia Society, China Institute, National Committee on US-China Relations. I have also been on NPR, ABCNews, iRadio, PBS to talk about my films.
Expertise
I am an experienced educator, currently an adjunct professor at Columbia University, and I have also taught at the School of Visual Arts in New York. While many of my films explore subjects rooted in China, they resonate globally and often spark meaningful conversations with audiences unfamiliar with the country. Having spent the first half of my life in China and the second in the United States, I bring both an insider’s insight and an outsider’s perspective. In addition to being a documentary filmmaker, I remain a journalist at heart, dedicating hours each day to researching China-related issues. Through my talks, I aim to challenge stereotypes and build understanding, engaging with themes of gender, human relationships, and contemporary Chinese identity.