Syon Peng is a New York-based film curator, director, and founder of Over The Wild. Raised in Shenzhen, she later moved to New York. By the age of twenty-one, she had travelled across all seven continents, and has since visited more than seventy countries. Living across different cultures has led her to think increasingly about one question: how does a film leave the hands of its creator, travel across languages, cities, and spaces, and ultimately find its audience.
Over The Wild is an international platform centred on film curation, while also working across rights transactions and distribution partnerships.
How did you first get into film curation?
I grew up watching films. My grandfather loved cinema and had a large DVD collection at home. As a teenager, I spent a lot of time at an independent cinema next to my school. The owner had collected many arthouse and independent films from different countries, and you could choose what you wanted to watch. At the time, access to these films in China was still quite limited, so I was very lucky to see a large number of great independent films from China and around the world there. That was also how my passion for cinema gradually developed.
Later, while interning in Shanghai, I began organising screenings with friends. I realised that the same film could create a completely different experience depending on where it was shown and who was watching it together. I became interested in everything around the film: who comes, where they watch, why they want to be there, and how a film actually becomes part of someone’s life.
How has living in different countries shaped your work?
Living in different countries has introduced me to many different people, spaces, and ways of life. I often think of my work as a kind of “translation.” Not linguistic translation, but finding connections between films, spaces, audiences, and different cultural backgrounds. I enjoy bringing these different elements together and finding the right way for them to meet.
How did Over The Wild take shape?
It grew naturally out of our screenings. Audiences came back and brought friends; as more invitations to collaborate followed, I realised that what we were doing had become more than screening films. We were taking part in the process of a film moving from the work itself to its audience. We began exploring rights transactions and distribution partnerships.
Our earlier projects—ColdMe, Stellar, and the non-profit initiative 0369—also gave us experience in public screenings, private communities, and cultural-access projects. Those experiences now come together in Over The Wild.
How do you define Over The Wild today?
Curation remains at the centre of what we do, while we also work across rights transactions and distribution partnerships. We work with filmmakers, rights holders, distributors, cinemas, cultural institutions, and partners across different fields to find the right way for each work to be presented in different markets and contexts.
Our audience is not limited to traditional cinephiles. What matters more is that they remain curious about the world. I want good films to become a more natural part of their lives, without every viewing becoming a decision that needs to be weighed over and over again.
What are your criteria when curating films?
The work itself comes first. We pay attention to awards, a director’s track record, and market performance, but what matters more to me is whether the work has a perspective, expression, and sensibility that genuinely hold together. Then comes context: why is this film worth showing here, and what kind of relationship might it have with this audience? For me, choosing a film and choosing how it is seen are part of the same decision.
How do you see the film industry changing today?
I see many positive developments. As economies, infrastructure, and technology advance, the barriers to making and watching films continue to fall. More people from different places and backgrounds can enter cinema and express their own experiences and imaginations. There will be more films and more voices. As a result, discovery, judgement, and circulation will become increasingly important. The traditional paths through film festivals, distribution, and cinemas remain important, but they are no longer the only ones. Different works can develop different trajectories and find audiences across different cultural and everyday contexts.
What do you ultimately want Over The Wild to become?
I hope Over The Wild can take part in a longer, richer life for films, while allowing cinema to enter people’s lives in more varied and natural ways.
Cinema has always been a window into other experiences for me: a place, a history, a culture, or another person’s life. I hope we can keep opening those windows, helping good work continue to move and creating more interesting encounters between people and the world.
