In a gay summer studded by growth, romance and young aspiration, Leste Chen's "Upcoming Summer" is something fresh on the big screen.

Thanks to the star power of young actress Zhang Zifeng and actor Wu Lei, the film is attracting Chinese audiences, many of whom are students on summer vacation, and grossed more than 134 million yuan ($20.73 million) over the past weekend. 

The coming-of-age, heart-warming teen drama film revolves around a pair of high school students who experience a summer of growth and change together amid white lies, loneliness, lost love affairs and parental divorce. Though before entering the theaters, assuming the two are engaged in a romantic puppy love story, many later discovered it was not really the case. It stands out in the youth film genre with fresh perspective and without old clichés in other such films.

It was Zhang and Wu's second collaboration after the anthology love film "Adoring" (2019). This time they revealed at the Beijing premiere on July 29 that they had brought in many ideas and attitude of China's new generation who were born in the early 2000s, integrating fun elements of music, the disc jockey, the social media influencer, live streaming and Douyin, trying to present how brave, free and willful the young generation is.

It's the second youth film 15 years after director Chen's critically acclaimed "Eternal Summer" in 2006. He worked with Zhang Zifeng on the crime thriller "Home Sweet Home" which was released in May, but he said the atmosphere in that film is "depressive," so in "Upcoming Summer," he wanted Zhang to be happy and "able to smile more."

"What you love or what you want cannot always be fulfilled. But you have to accept this, bravely face your true self - this is the most important thing for the film," the director said. 

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