All posts tagged: Shanghai International Film Festival

Shanghai Film Festival Unveils 2026 Competition Section

Shanghai Film Festival Unveils 2026 Competition Section

Published by Daniella Wilson

The Shanghai International Film Festival unveiled the main competition lineup for its Golden Goblet Awards over the weekend, with all 12 titles bowing as world premieres — a first in the section’s history, according to the festival. The 28th edition runs June 12-21. Three of the main competition entries are Chinese-language productions, all from emerging directors. In total, 49 titles across five competitive sections are vying for prizes, drawn from a record submission pool of roughly 4,100 films from 125 countries and regions. The main competition spans 15 countries and territories. The Chinese-language entries are Zhong Kaifeng’s Atlantic Rhapsody and Liu Xiaoyang’s The Great Skull, both from the mainland, and Frankie Tam Gong-Yuen’s Secret in the Box, a mainland–Hong Kong co-production. Atlantic Rhapsody is said to blend drama, comedy and fantasy in a story about a supermarket stock clerk left sleepless and hearing voices after he accidentally cooks a shark. The Great Skull, a dark comedy starring Wen Qi, Ni Hongjie and Yu Entai, follows a soon-to-graduate young woman and her mother as they contend …

Shanghai Film Festival to Open With Hong Kong Drama ‘Afterpiece’

Shanghai Film Festival to Open With Hong Kong Drama ‘Afterpiece’

Published by Daniella Wilson

Hong Kong drama Afterpiece, produced by industry veteran Derek Yee and helmed by first-time feature filmmaker Keane T.K. Wong, will world-premiere as the opening film of the 28th Shanghai International Film Festival, the festival announced this week. The event’s full lineup will be unveiled on June 3, and the festival runs June 12-21 this year. Written and directed by Wong, Afterpiece follows Owen, a celebrated stage director who has spent more than a decade in creative paralysis. When his former lover resurfaces and his wife begins to drift toward betrayal, Owen commits to writing, directing and starring in a new theatrical production — only to become dangerously entangled with an untrained young actress he encounters during casting, steadily dissolving the boundary between stage and life. Stephen Fung stars as Owen, with Chrissie Chau, Myolie Wu and Angela Yuen rounding out the cast. The project grew out of the Directors’ Succession Scheme of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government, which pairs established filmmakers with emerging directors as producer-mentors. Yee is best known for a string …

Box Office Boom and New Films

Box Office Boom and New Films

Published by Daniella Wilson

The China Film Pavilion has returned to Cannes for the fifth consecutive year, and organizers have arrived with news of a booming domestic market and a slate designed to showcase the breadth of talent back home. The numbers alone make for compelling reading. The China Film Co-production Corporation reports that, as of May 5, China’s domestic box office had already reached $1.98 billion — around one-fifth of global revenue year-to-date. That follows a 2025 in which the Chinese market collected $7.45 billion, a year-on-year increase of 21.9 percent. Ticket sales across urban cinemas rose 22.57 percent, and the country added 2,219 screens over the course of the year, bringing the total to 93,187 — more than anywhere else in the world. The five-day May Day holiday, which ended May 5, added around $110 million to that tally, a modest rise on 2025. The top performers were Cheng Wei-hao’s thriller Vanishing Point, followed by the actioner Cold War 1994 ($21.2 million), 20th Century Studios’ The Devil Wears Prada 2 ($6.1 million) and Chen Sicheng’s comedy Being …