His parents hailed from Shanghai, with ancestral roots in Nantong, Jiangsu, and had relocated to Xinjiang as part of a state initiative to support frontier development.

[1] One of the three students who were admitted to the graduate program that year, Lu studied the works of his favorite directors including Ingmar Bergman, Jim Jarmusch, and Pier Paolo Pasolini at the academy.

[2] Lu first gained recognition for his adapted script from Zhang Chenggong’s eponymous novel for the 30-episode TV series Black Hole, directed by Guan Hu.

In 2012, Lu’s historical film The Last Supper, which had its release delayed for several months due to censorship over its alleged references to modern Chinese history, received mixed reviews and performed poorly at the box office.

[5] His behavior during filming sparked controversy in the industry, including serious delays, excessive shooting, and frequent script changes, which led to the originally female lead role of Consort Yu being reduced to a character with no lines.

[6][7] In 2019, his sci-fi film Bureau 749, inspired by his two-year work experience at the secret military institution Unit 749,[4][8] completed shooting but faced delays due to censorship and funding issues, the latter a spillover effect from the industry-wide disruptions caused by Fan Bingbing’s tax scandal.

[10] In the same year, to clear the debts from Bureau 749, he joined Zhejiang TV's variety show I Am the Actor (Season 3) as a judge, wrote and directed his first TV series Fantastic Doctors (2023), based on Korean drama Good Doctor, for a partner company that had purchased the rights to the original but was unable to proceed after China’s 2016 K-content ban.