Nicola Yunrui Li

Nicola Yunrui Li is a Chinese writer and director based in the United States. Her work explores intimacy and family through restrained realism, finding drama in the small routines, gestures, and silences of everyday life.

Her latest short film, River of Us (2025), was selected for the Cinema Femme Short Film Festival and named a Semi-Finalist at the Flickers' Rhode Island International Film Festival. Her earlier short, Peacock (2021), received awards and recognition from international film festivals including Canada Shorts, Rome Prisma Independent Film Awards, and the New York International Film Awards. Her debut feature, A Weekend (2027), is currently in post-production.

Li has collaborated with filmmaker Sharon Lockhart, serving as assistant director and post-production supervisor on Lockhart’s latest feature, Windward (2025), which screened at the 63rd New York Film Festival and the 48th Cinéma du Réel International Documentary Film Festival, and was presented at the 15th Shanghai Biennale. She has also served as a second-round short film juror for the Shanghai International Film Festival.

She holds an MFA in Film Directing from the California Institute of the Arts and an MSc from University College London. Li is currently an Assistant Professor of Film Production at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.