The 28th Shanghai International Film Festival closed June 21 with its clearest statement yet on what the industry values most: new voices, deep pipelines, and an embrace of artificial intelligence that it insists will complement rather than displace the humans making films. Whether the industry believes that last part is another matter.
Debut Directors Had the Night — in Both Directions
When Zhong Kaifeng’s “Atlantic Rhapsody” claimed best feature film at the Golden Goblet Awards, it completed a sweep that no one had mapped in advance but felt, in retrospect, inevitable. The film – a loose, time-skipping portrait of a young man searching for his father against the freewheeling capitalist churn of late-1990s Northeast China – also won best cinematography for Hao Jiayue, whose previous work includes “A Song Sung Blue.” It is Zhong’s debut feature.”
The Asian New Talent section told the same story. Gong Yiwen’s “Her First Taste,” a campus-set identity film developed with support from the SIFF Project over the past three years, won both best film and best actress for lead Ma Fufu. Sompot Chidgasornpongse’s “9 Temples to Heaven” – the Thai director’s Cannes Directors’ Fortnight title – was a double winner in the section. Apart from the best screenplay prize, which went to “Hunter’s Moon,” every Asian New Talent award went to a debut feature.
