Shanghai Film Festival unveils 2023 competition selection

In a bid to bring back the audiences to its films and the domestic films market, Shanghai Film Festival announced its competition list for 2023. In 2023, Shanghai International Film Festival will complete 25 years, hence the film festival will be special for more than one reason. The competition list for 2023 will feature a lineup heavy on local Chinese film titles. It includes films from Iran and Japan too. However, missing from the list is any US film or documentary.

The 2023 Shanghai International Film Festival will run from June 9 to 18, 2023.

Shanghai Film Festival: A no-show because of COVID-19 pandemic

It will be the first version of the event that will be accessible to the attendees physically, since the pandemic. China was one of the most severely hit countries by the COVID-19 pandemic. Last year, even after the COVID scare reduced considerably, the film festival was canceled as the government put in place strict travel restrictions. Shanghai and neighbouring cities had a month-long COVID-related lockdown.

Prior to that, the Shanghai Film Festival was held but it was an entirely domestic Chinese affair. This was because no flights in and out of China were allowed at the time. This year, after a lot of back and forth, the organisers are hoping to bring back the audiences to the film festival. They are calling it Beijing’s current “open for business” policy push to the cultural sphere.

Shanghai Film Festival: What to expect

The Shanghai Film Festival is widely regarded as China’s most established and artistically respected cinema event. However, every year, there is also discourse on the nature of the film festival as like most other things, it has politics meddling with the arts. It is subject to prevailing local political priorities as much as the artistic will of programmers.

For the 2023 edition, organisers said they received nearly 8,800 film entries to choose from, spanning more than 128 countries and regions.

The film festival, along with the US has also given the Korean film industry no space on the competition list. This could be a result of the diplomatic relationship between China and Korea.

Shanghai International Film Festival 2023

Meanwhile, this is the 2023 Shanghai Film Festival lineup:

Feature Film Competition

All Ears, Dir. Liu Jiayin (China)
Dust to Dust, Dir. Jonathan Li (China)
Good Autumn, MommyDir. CHEN Shizhong (China)
Joseph’s Son,Dir. Haobam Paban Kumar (India)
Kindling, Dir. Connor O’Hara (U.K.)
Mom, Is That You?!Dir. Yôji Yamada (Japan)
Muyeres,Dir. Marta Lallana (Spain)
Nina,Dir. Oksana Bychkova (Russia-Georgia)
The Annoyed,Dir. Mehdi Fard Ghaderi (Iran)
The Chapel,Dir. Dominique Deruddere (Belgium)
The First Day Of My Life,Dir. Paolo Genovese (Italy)
Yoko,Dir. Kazuyoshi Kumakiri (Japan)

Asian New Talent

1.5 HorsepowerDir. Rasool Kahani (Iran)
Cause Of Death: UnknownDir. Ali Zarnegar (Iran)
Day DreamingDir. WANG Zichuan (China)
Gone With The BoatDir. CHEN Xiaoyu (China)
In Broad DaylightDir. Lawrence Kan (Hong Kong)
Love, My WayDir. LIU Bing (China)
MayDir. LUO Dong (China)
People Who Talk To Plushies Are KindDir. Yurina Kaneko (Japan)
QashDir. Aisultan Seit (Kazakhstan)
SundayDir. Shokir Kholikov (Uzbekistan)
The SignalDir. Lee Phongsavanh (Laos)
Time Still Turns The PagesDir. Nick Cheuk (Hong Kong)

Animated Feature Films

Dolphin BoyDir. Mohammad Kheirandish (Iran-Türkiye)
Four Souls Of CoyoteDir. Áron Gauder (Hungary)
Gonta: The Story Of The Two-Named Dog In The Fukushima DisasterDir. Akio Nishizawa (Japan)
Master ZhongDirs. WANG Yuxi-HUANG Shanchuan (China)
The InseparablesDir. Jérémie Degruson (Belgium-France-Spain)

Documentary

Anxious In BeirutDir. Zakaria Jaber (Jordan-Lebanon-Qatar-Spain)
Leap Of FaithDir. YANG Lina (China)
Moses’ SpiesDir. Itzik Lerner (Israel)
The CaravanDir. Núria Clavero-Aitor Palacios (Spain-Mexico)
The Passion Of MahmoudDir. Davoud Abdolmaleki (Iran)

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