Contemporary Chinese cinema under the spotlight at Shanghai festival

The 26th Shanghai International Film Festival is this year reflecting the rich diversity of the country’s contemporary cinema, with no less than 12 mainland Chinese productions featured among the event’s four main Golden Goblet competitions for feature films.

It’s a move that befits the city as China’s film capital, a title which dates back to the origins of Chinese cinema in the early 1900s when the first major studios took root in this sprawling metropolis that is today home to more than 26 million people.

Overall, 50 international productions made the cut for the Golden Goblets, from as far afield as Bangladesh and Finland, but much of the attention will focus on the locals, at a time when the Chinese film industry continues its post-pandemic rebuild with overall box office receipts this year reaching around RMB 20 billion by May as the nation resumes its position as the second-largest film market in the world.

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The main competition at this June 14 to 23 festival boasts four Chinese productions in its final field of 14 films – of which, overall, 12 are being presented here as world premieres and the remaining two as international premieres.

“After the announcement of the shortlist, we generated a lot of positive response from film fans on the social media that they are looking forward to watching these movies at SIFF,” said Chen Guo, SIFF’s managing director and general manager. “The positive feedback from film fans is the most encouraging to us.”

There’s a buzz around town about the latest production from China’s Guan Hu, who arrives in Shanghai fresh from winning the Prix Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes with his drama Black Dog, about a wayward youth returning to his home town in the country. Guan has A Man and a Woman competing for the Golden

Goblet and it’s a pandemic (and Hong Kong) set drama about two lonely people drawn together in quarantine starring two of the hottest local stars in Ni Ni and Huang Bo.

Meanwhile, another Cannes favourite in Wei Shujun – who has featured at the famous French festival three times - is presenting Don’t Worry, Be Happy, a family drama centred around the bond between an ailing mother and her intellectually challenged son. It also stars a few big names in China, in Huang Xiaoming and Monyca Lu, Zu Feng while there’s also a role for arthouse auteur Jia Zhangke.

Rounding out the Chinese presence in the running for the top award are Gu Changwei’s The Hedgehog – with veteran Gu You playing a social outcast whose family protect him from society – while Zhang Dalei’s Starfall follows and old man (Liang Jingdong) in his trip into the desert as he looks for answers to the riddles of life.

“These four films represent the different works of directors from veteran, middle-aged, and young generations, all of whom are in their creative prime and have recently produced significant works,” said Chen. “Through these films, I hope more audiences will see the increasingly delicate and rich expressions in Chinese films.”

It’s a diverse selection, as noted by the Golden Goblet main competition’s jury head Tran Anh Hung, the France-based Vietnamese director who, as it happens, was named Cannes’ best director last year for The Taste of Things.

“We plan to discuss [the films] a lot,” said Tran, speaking at Friday’s Golden Goblets jury press conference.

“A festival is always a place to be very concentrated on movies, to talk about movies with friends and with people in the same industry. It’s really a great pleasure.”

There are a few familiar faces on this year’s juries. Tran returns to SIFF after having sat on the main competition jury back 2011, while two of China’s box office champions in Zhou Xun (Painted Skin) and Tony Leung Ka-fai (Cold War) are also helping decide the main prize. Meanwhile, China’s Cao Baoping returns as head of the jury for the 11-strong Asian New Talent competition. Cao was nominated for the same award for his debut Trouble Makers in 2006, then he returned in 2015 to win the major overall prize with The Dead End.

China has six films in the running for the Asian New Talent award while Cao Liang’s The Royal Cat represents the country in the animation competition. Cao’s film features an odd-couple matching of a stray cat and human in ancient times who are trying to work out how the emperor’s son was himself turned into a cat. It comes at a time that there’s been renewed interest in Chinese animation, a genre the local industry says now accounts for 10 per cent of box office tickets each year.

SIFF claims more than 3,700 films were submitted for this year’s festival – in the end the festival says it decided upon “461 films, approximately 1,600 screenings, and around 90 audience meet-and-greet sessions across 47 cinemas in Shanghai's 16 districts.”

While the event offers international visitors a chance to catch up with what’s happening in Chinese cinema, there’s also an opportunity for local audiences to feast on international fare and reports in the lead up to the festival claimed two of hottest tickets were for 4k restorations of the Hollywood classics Pulp Fiction and 2001: A Space Odyssey.

As well as movies already made, the sidebar SIFF Market has attracted around 3,000 film industry movers and shakers, and they’ll come to town to talk about future productions and distribution deals.

No doubt many attendees will also hit the cinema while in town. Main Golden Goblet jury member Matthias Glasner will certainly join them.

“I look forward to seeing films from countries that I don’t usually see films from,” said the German. “I hope to get some impressions of the world that will stay with me.”