The Shanghai International Film Festival unveiled the competition selection for its 25th-anniversary edition Monday, featuring a lineup heavy on local Chinese titles, as well as substantial inclusion from Iran and Japan. Notably, though, festival organizers chose not to include a single film from the U.S. movie industry in their 2023 competition lineup.
The 2023 Shanghai festival, running June 9-18, will be the first version of the event that’s easily accessible to the global film industry since the COVID-19 pandemic began in early 2020. Last year, the festival was canceled in the wake of Shanghai’s monthlong COVID-19 lockdown and the government’s strict travel restrictions at the time. The festival was held the previous two years, but it became an almost entirely domestic Chinese affair, as flights in and out of China were hard to come by at the time (and all travelers had to endure lengthy and expensive hotel quarantines to gain entry to the country).
This year, Shanghai organizers are hoping to woo the world back to China, extending Beijing’s current “open for business” policy push to the cultural sphere. But the deteriorated diplomatic relationship between Washington and Beijing — as well as the diminished earnings of U.S. movies in China — could present headwinds to substantial U.S. industry participation, insiders say.
The Shanghai Film Festival is widely regarded as China’s most established and artistically respected cinema event. But its competition lineups have tended to be somewhat eccentric for a festival of its stature, as the event, like all official cultural activities in China, is subject to prevailing local political priorities as much as the artistic will of programmers. For the 2023 edition, organizers said they received nearly 8,800 film entries to choose from, spanning more than 128 countries and regions. The high-flying Korean film industry is another notable absence throughout the competition lineup, though, thanks to a de facto ban on Korean entertainment in China stemming from old geopolitical grievances.
Shanghai’s screening lineups for other sections of the festival, which tend to include more crowd-pleasing retrospectives of Hollywood and international commercial filmmaking, are expected in the coming days, along with the makeup of the 2023 competition jury.
Feature Film Competition
“All Ears” Dir. Liu Jiayin (China)
“Dust To Dust” Dir. Jonathan Li (China)
“Good Autumn, Mommy” Dir. 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 Horsepower” Dir. Rasool Kahani (Iran)
“Cause Of Death: Unknown” Dir. Ali Zarnegar (Iran)
“Day Dreaming” Dir. WANG Zichuan (China)
“Gone With The Boat” Dir. CHEN Xiaoyu (China)
“In Broad Daylight” Dir. Lawrence Kan (Hong Kong)
“Love, My Way” Dir. LIU Bing (China)
“May” Dir. LUO Dong (China)
“People Who Talk To Plushies Are Kind” Dir. Yurina Kaneko (Japan)
“Qash” Dir. Aisultan Seit (Kazakhstan)
“Sunday” Dir. Shokir Kholikov (Uzbekistan)
“The Signal” Dir. Lee Phongsavanh (Laos)
“Time Still Turns The Pages” Dir. Nick Cheuk (Hong Kong)
Animated Feature Films
“Dolphin Boy” Dir. Mohammad Kheirandish (Iran-Türkiye)
“Four Souls Of Coyote” Dir. Áron Gauder (Hungary)
“Gonta: The Story Of The Two-Named Dog In The Fukushima Disaster” Dir. Akio Nishizawa (Japan)
“Master Zhong” Dirs. WANG Yuxi-HUANG Shanchuan (China)
“The Inseparables” Dir. Jérémie Degruson (Belgium-France-Spain)
Documentary
“Anxious In Beirut” Dir. Zakaria Jaber (Jordan-Lebanon-Qatar-Spain)
“Leap Of Faith” Dir. YANG Lina (China)
“Moses’ Spies” Dir. Itzik Lerner (Israel)
“The Caravan” Dir. Núria Clavero-Aitor Palacios (Spain-Mexico)
“The Passion Of Mahmoud” Dir. Davoud Abdolmaleki (Iran)
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