This year’s Shanghai International Film Festival delivered on its promises to celebrate the Asian cinema landscape wholly. Including the return of Chinese filmmakers to the festival arena. Blake & Wang P.A entertainment attorney, Brandon Blake, brings some key thoughts from this year’s installment of the festival.

Big Wins

Alongside wins for the two most established film markets in the Asian zone- Japan and China- we saw other, less known attendees like Laos and Uzbekistan take home Golden Goblet wins. Kazuyoshi Kumakiri’s Yoko managed to sweep wins in the best feature film, screenplay, and actress categories. Best director went to China’s Liu Jiayin for the film All Ears. The film itself received high critical praise and one half  of the best actor award as well. It was tied with Da Peng for his performance in Dust to Dust. As the joint win was also something of a touching reunion for the two actors, it’s been a trendy story on Chinese social media since.

This from over 53 films in entry for the five main competition sections, with 450 films on display across the 10 day festival itself. And this without the presence of South Korea, which has been having a showstopper moment across both Asian and international markets. One and Only, a movie with a silly, but intriguing premise as a dance-themed comedy, closed the festival.

Crows also returned in abandon to the first ‘normal’ festival since the pandemic, with over 300,000 tickets selling in the first hour sales were open. For a festival that sells itself as a Chinese connection to the world, a red carpet filled with celebrity A-listers (including Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh) certainly added to the atmosphere.

The Sales Side

On the sales side of the festival, Hong Kong filmmakers continue to reign supreme, choosing mostly mainland Chinese blockbusters in an industry trend that seems set to stay for several years. However, international filmmakers were quick to celebrate the enthusiastic fan attendance and overall atmosphere of the festival. Veteran filmmakers managed to pack out their Masterclasses with Chinese film industry hopefuls.

Intriguing, we may also be seeing the birth of a new popular Asian category- Sci-Fi. It’s a very new entrant into the Chinese market, for one. Yet this year we have seen The Wandering Earth 2 boom to over $1.3B in ticket sales, making it one of the most successful franchises to launch from Chinese shores in recent years. Several seminars on the topic at the festival are positioning the genre- Sci-Fi given an Asian twist and identity- as a new evolution of what is already a staple on Western markets. With the current receptivity of streaming platform audiences to internationally-produced fare, even in non-English languages, this could represent an interesting future for the industry as the whole, if stories manage to gain traction with wider audiences.

Overall, it was a bustling return to a feeling of ‘normalcy’ and business of usual, and one we hope to see expand and grow for the 2024 edition, too.