“Lili” is available to watch on YouTube here.

Watch out, world. Stanford CS majors are not only designing apps and conducting research — they’re creating award-winning short films, too.

“Lili” (2025) was co-directed by Yannie Tan ’24 (who also produced the film) and Cyprien Fasquelle ’24 M.A. ’25. Written by Grace Zhou ’22 M.S. ’24, the film centers around the titular pianist (Charlotte Hood), who vies for a prestigious composing prize against her rival and love interest, Maurice (Tony Ozkan). Since premiering at the World Culture Film Festival and the LA International Film Festival — where it won Best Score — the film has amassed over 75,000 views on YouTube.

Tan and Zhou met through Stanford Students in Entertainment, a campus group that helps students explore the entertainment industry. They were both interested in working on a film in some capacity, and since they both happened to be doing a summer internship for Adobe, they decided to room together. Working on creative products all day inspired the two to start thinking about something they could create together.

“One night, Yannie came into the living room ― I thought she had already gone to bed ― and told me she had this romantic vision in her head of two people playing the piano together. That was the spark, and from there we grew that spark into a storyline,” Zhou said.

During her Adobe internship, Tan also worked on the set of a horror film with filmmaker Wesley Wang, the creator of the 2023 short film “nothing, except everything.” Watching Wang direct for four nights on an overnight shoot motivated Tan to create her own short film. 

“To see a crew of 40 people working with such devotion — that really stuck with me. When I came back to Stanford, I thought, if I could capture even a fraction of that energy with my own cast and crew, then we’d be in good shape,” Tan said.

“Lili” was filmed entirely on campus in 2024 over four days during winter quarter. Although the film is set at a music conservatory in the 1960s, the film makes use of familiar locations like Lake Lagunita and Memorial Church. Tan worked with artistic director Victoria Misu to find costumes and props evoking the antiquated feel of a traditional music conservatory. 

Jamie Kurtzig ’26 M.S. ’27, a production assistant on the film, noted that Tan’s choice of locations made it seem like “Lili” is set in an entirely different era. One big asset was the Stanford Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), an ornate pink building tucked into a hilltop behind Florence Moore Hall.

“We got to film in a lot of lesser known parts of campus and show that there’s so much beauty at Stanford, even besides the things that it’s most well known for,” Kurtzig said.

For the music, Tan tapped her friend Caleb Liu ’25 M.S. ’26. The two met when Tan attended a showcase of one of Liu’s pieces by the Stanford Symphony Orchestra. 

“We had this friendship that was based in music,” Liu said. “And then her senior year came along, and she had the very ambitious and awesome goal of making her first short film and directing it. She just reached out and told me about the project, and I was like, ‘I’d love to work with you.’”

Liu composed the majority of the film’s music, including the love theme, which plays over a montage of Lili and Maurice bonding through garden strolls, library dates and playful antics in the rehearsal room. Liu chose the violin for the theme, saying it is an instrument that “sings like a human voice.”

“He sent it to me one evening, and I remember feeling so joyful after listening to that melody for the first time. It was so perfectly attuned to the story and it almost felt as if the music was just meant to be,” Tan said.

Beginning as a project between friends, “Lili” came together thanks to donations from family and friends of the cast and crew. Tan expressed her gratitude to everyone who donated and maintained that even after the film’s release, the friendships formed on and off set still remain. 

“I think the in-between moments are the best,” Tan said. “The film is very dear to me, but I really treasure the friendships I’ve made — the late nights working with Grace, the banter with Charlotte and Victoria.” 

As for the phenomenon of engineering students pouring their time and energy into a musical romantic-drama film, Thomas Freeland PhD ’99, who plays Lili’s music professor in the film, believes it is a testament to the passion that students hold for the arts even as their careers trend toward science and technology.

“People who do artistic things [at Stanford], they do it because they really want to,” Freeland said. “It is a big sacrifice of time and energy to go beyond your main course of study to be working on music, making a movie, acting in a play. I have nothing but admiration for the students who challenge themselves that way.”