The Dating Game

2025

Sn a country where eligible men greatly outnumber women, three perpetual bachelors join an intensive seven-day dating camp led by one of China's most sought-after dating coaches in what may be their last-ditch effort to find love.

Set in China, where eligible men outnumber women by over 30 million, The Dating Game is the story of Zhou, Li, and Wu, three bachelors embarking on a seven-day dating camp, led by Hao, one of China’s most sought-after dating coaches. In their last-ditch effort to find love, the bachelors chuckle and bond as Hao makes them over, altering how they look and act online—and in real life. It’s all part of Hao’s signature “strategic deception,” a series of techniques designed to, purportedly, make humans connect. Hao’s credentials? Hao successfully wooed Wen, a stylish, educated city-girl—a real catch who is now his wife.

As our three bachelors stumble through the camp’s awkward challenges, they try to make sense of their authentic and constructed selves, and find the self-confidence they need to land that date.

The Dating Game is, on the surface, a whimsical romp through courtship in the digital age, but it also reveals the social challenges that leave us questioning how we seek human connection.

** WORLD PREMIERE AT SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL, JANUARY 2025 **

Watch the Trailer

Format & Length: HD, 90 min
Director: Violet Du Feng
DOP: Wei Gao
Editor: John Farbrother
Composer: Chad Channon
Post-Production: Hinterland AS
Sound Design: FilmReaktor AS
Producers: Violet Du Feng, Joanna Natasegara, James Costa, Mette Cheng Munthe-Kaas
Executive Producers: Chandra Jessee & Rebecca Lichtenfeld for INMAAT, Julie Parker Benello, Shizuka Asakawa, Ken Pelletier, Trevor Burgess
Co-Executive Producers: Yao King, Jenn Lee Smith, Jamie Wolf, Natalie Seaver
Co-Producers: Abigail Anketell-Jones, Betsy Tsai, Maggie Li
Production: Fish & Bear Pictures & Violet Films
in association with
Bird Street Productions, Ten Thousand Images, Chicken & Egg Pictures

Reviews

"Loved the provocative Sundance doc, The Dating Game… It’s funny, empathetic, and completely fascinating, with very specific problems and very universal dilemmas.”
–Movie Maker Magazine

“The film balances the reality of these experiences with compassion, a sense of humor, and quiet observation, giving the subjects a chance to reflect on their own behaviors and memories. Their dating issues began long before the camera started rolling, and it’s clear that it will continue long after the credits.”
–RogerEbert.com

“Entertaining, stylish and snappy in the best possible blend, The Dating Game gives viewers an engrossing, well-informed and wisely balanced look into contemporary China society.”
–The Utah Review

“There’s a poignancy to this film and a real sensitivity and empathy in the filmmaking that I found truly delightful as well as revelatory, and it’s a great follow-up to Hidden Letters.”
–Top Docs Podcast

“The colorful, almost exuberant surfaces of Violet Du Feng’s The Dating Game mask a grim, dystopian reality.”
–Vulture

“An illuminating look at a superpower in the throes of a burgeoning cultural catastrophe—and of a few of its myriad desperate-for-love men.”
–The Daily Beast

“Director Violet Du Feng takes a seemingly straightforward premise — a week-long dating camp in China — and slowly unspools it into something far more unsettling: a deeply ingrained cultural crisis masquerading as a matchmaking experiment. What begins as an observational documentary about three bachelors looking for love soon reveals itself as an indictment of a broken system, where romance is less about genuine connection and more about navigating the impossible expectations placed upon both men and women… Both darkly funny and deeply unsettling… It is a film that lingers long after the credits roll.”
–Movieweb