Chinese filmmaker Zhong Kaifeng formally introduced himself to the world at the Shanghai International Film Festival on Saturday night, picking up the main Golden Goblet award for his debut, Atlantic Rhapsody.
For the Golden Goblet jury — led by Hong Kong star Tony Leung Chiu-wai — the film is a “uniquely compelling visual experience.” For the 29-year-old Zhong, the story of a young man from northern China searching for meaning in life is a sign.
“I want to say that Atlantic is not a definition, it does not provide answers — but today it seems to have given me an answer, and that answer is to persist, to love, to work hard, and then to believe,” he said.
And for SIFF itself, the win was a fitting end to a festival that set out with the aim of putting young talent front and center. Zhong’s work is a case in point, a film the jury said “captivated and impressed” them with its “bold experimental approach [that] explores the absurdity of human life” — and the festival will hope it has unearthed a new voice in Chinese cinema. Another exciting emerging talent was fittingly revealed in SIFF’s Asian New Talent awards, too, when first-timer Gong Yiwen won for her heartwarming coming-of-age drama Her First Taste, a film that emerged from the SIFF Project initiative for young filmmakers.
“The film’s patient observation and sensitivity to the textures of ordinary life announce a new exciting voice in Asian cinema,” the Asian New Talent jury said. “Her First Taste is a memorable work about young love and coming of age, balancing emotional restraint with deep resonance, and marking Gong Yiwen as a filmmaker of great promise.”
The focus at SIFF this year has been on young filmmakers, with both a heavy presence of emerging talent from China and the region across the screenings and an emphasis on the support the festival has offered them through initiatives such as the SIFF ING Young Filmmakers Program and the SIFF YOUNG × Shanghai Young Filmmakers Support Program, with Joan Chen and Wen Muye acting as mentors.
The festival counts 78 productions that have found cinema release after being nurtured across these programs over previous years. Several titles that came through the SIFF Project initiative also feature in this year’s lineup: Wan Bo’s suspense-filled drama Strangers in the Mountain, selected in the Asian New Talent competition, along with the Peng Chen- and Xu Wei-directed Desert Beneath the Ocean and Kangdrun’s Linka Linka, both elsewhere in the program.
Saturday night started the winding down of SIFF’s 10-day stretch, which on opening night had given fans a fix of stars both global and local — among them Leung and Michelle Yeoh, here also to promote her latest film, This Is My Time, her first Chinese-language production in nearly a decade, following her best actress Oscar for Everything Everywhere All at Once — along with jury members Guan Hu and Xin Zhilei.
There were touching tributes to industry veterans Lisa Lu (Crazy Rich Asians) — 100 years old by the local calendar, still shining brightly on the red carpet as she appeared to accept a lifetime achievement award — and director Zhang Yimou, who picked up an award for his “outstanding” contribution to Chinese cinema.
Still to come are screenings of the winners and an assortment of other titles, along with the closing film, Zhang Disha’s The Decisive Moment, which makes its world premiere in Shanghai on Sunday. When the curtain comes down tonight, the official tally will be around 1,600 screenings of some 420 films across the city and others in the surrounding Yangtze River Delta region.
There were sold-out screenings of hits from international festivals, including Cannes (Pawel Pawlikowski’s Fatherland), and palpable delight among film fans of all ages at some of the retrospectives — such as those devoted to the works of Ken Loach, Billy Wilder and Marilyn Monroe — which offered a rare chance to see international classics on the big screen in all their 4K-rendered glory.
The diversity of the movies on show — and the audiences’ reaction — was highlighted best by Moroccan Yassine El Idrissi, who picked up the Golden Goblet for best director for his wonderfully humorous take on a lady who refuses to give in to age or circumstance — Halima. “It proves that we are all the same,” he said. “We just need some translation.”
Also on the purely industry side of things, there was no escaping the lurking presence of artificial intelligence, with a series of panels bringing together industry heavyweights to discuss the various pros and cons. While several talks focused specifically on AI — with titles like “Smart Tech, Immersive Worlds, the Next Film Revolution” and “When AI Learns to Create, What Grounds Cinema” — the subject trickled into almost every panel.
But SIFF also looked to provide working — often live — examples of what the technology can do, in an effort, we can suppose, to clear up some of the confusion about what it can actually do. The AI Backlot initiative paired traditional filmmakers with AI upstarts and tasked them with making a short film in a month — while setting them up like gamers so that people could watch how they went about their work. Chinese filmmaker Hou Zuxin was part of that program and walked away saying it was “like I entered a whole new world.”
Festival head Chen Guo, managing director of the Shanghai International Film & TV Events Center, said ahead of the big night that, though “reluctant to see the festival come to an end,” she felt the 28th edition had achieved its mission of “aligning global and domestic resources” and “building industrial pathways to bring projects to fruition.”
“The global film industry remains in a prolonged period of adjustment, and creators are in growing need of encouragement,” she said. “As one of the most prominent film festivals in Asia, SIFF holds special significance this year by providing spiritual support and renewed confidence for Chinese-language filmmakers. Here, they witness the dedication of their peers and the breakthroughs of emerging talents, sustaining their creative passion through diverse films and sincere exchanges.
“We hope this year’s festival also gives global industry a closer look at what drives these filmmakers — their creative convictions and their long-term vision for Chinese films. And we hope it leads to more lasting, win-win partnerships across borders.”