We Crown Each Other: Key Takeaways
- Chaumet recruited an award-winning actor, Cannes-selected director and famed cinematographer for a Qixi short film
- We Crown Each Other overturns the traditional proposal narrative
- The film updates Chaumet’s imperial heritage for contemporary China
Chaumet’s Qixi film We Crown Each Other is a romantic short film built around surprise: two people are ready to propose – each to the other. It’s a subversion of traditional gift-giving, proposal narratives, but the more telling choice is happening behind the camera.
The famed Parisian jeweller has put together a crew of three figures with serious cinema credentials: actor Wen Qi, director Zhou Jinghao and cinematographer Chengma Zhiyuan.
This isn’t campaign film for the sake of having one
The collaboration gives the film more than glossy credentials. The surprise that’s central to its plot is carefully paced and revealed. Close attention is paid to composition, the small gestures and tells. Chaumet has treated its ambassadors and creative talent as a genuine filmmaking unit.
The three figures behind the We Crown Each Other
Wen Qi
Actor and Chaumet ambassador
Wen Qi won the Golden Horse Award for Best Supporting Actress at 14.
Her performance in Yang Ya-che’s political family drama made her one of Chinese-language cinema’s most closely watched young actors.
Zhou Jinghao
Writer-director
Zhou’s feature debut premiered in Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes in 2025 and competed for the Caméra d’Or.
Chengma Zhiyuan
DoP
Chengma won the Silver Camera 300 for Best Cinematography at the Manaki Brothers festival for Wei Shujun’s 16mm neo-noir Only the River Flows.
The film also premiered in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard.
What happens in Chaumet’s Qixi short film?
On a sunlit riverside staircase, a couple plays rock-paper-scissors. With each success, the victor climbs one step higher. The man has a Chaumet ring box hidden behind his back, and all he needs is one more win. A proposal looks imminent.
But the pair keep producing the same hand. When he eventually begins to kneel, she stops him and steps down to meet him. The camera then reveals a second ring box behind her back. She came ready to propose too.
Wen Qi supplies the film’s emotional centre but keeps the acting grounded enough that it doesn’t overplay the twist. Zhou directs with patience. Chengma keeps the camera precise. As a result, none of the show-stealing jewellery actually steals the show, and We Crown Each Other is allowed to live up to its intention as a short film.
A connection to the past and present
The jewellery seen on screen is part of Chaumet’s Joséphine Collection – rings, bracelets, necklaces, earrings, pendants either in platinum, rose or white gold and set with diamonds, aquamarines, pearls and sapphire – inspired by the tastes of Empress Joséphine.
That regal symbolism and opulence continue in We Crown Each Other, but is updated for the modern viewer. Wen Qi’s character and her male counterpart end the stair-ascending game of rock, paper, scissors on equal footing.
More than two hundred years on, Joséphine’s crown and bended knee have become the rings of two equals
No longer does one side kneel to the other. The woman is presented as an equal. Love is presented as a journey walked side by side – and, as our closing shot of achingly sleek ringed fingers shows – hand in hand.
The Dao view: Power changes hands with We Crown Each Other
More than two hundred years on, Joséphine’s crown and bended knee have become the rings of two equals. Ceremony and heritage are preserved, but the narrative has undergone a profound change. Romance, this film says, can be ceremonial without being one-sided.
Good heritage marketing knows which parts of a legacy to preserve and which to reinterpret. It can drop what’s no longer relevant but express what’s still important. And that’s what’s been done here. We Crown Each Other artfully empowers the women of today, without losing the grandeur of empresses of old.
