Shanghai Film Festival Sets Out China-Centric Agenda

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Women Talking,” which won Sarah Polley an Oscar for best adapted screenplay, was this weekend named best narrative feature at the Bali International Film Festival (aka the Balinale).Ashen Nadeem’s “Crows Are White” won the feature documentary prize and “The Tone Wheels,” by Yuda Kurniawan, was named winner of the Gary L Hayes Award for Indonesian Filmmaker. The festival jury called “The Tone Wheels” “an outstanding endeavor that transported us into the backstreets of Jakarta on a captivating musical journey.” The film depicts a busking village where dreams flourish, despite the scarcity of resources and equipment.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Acclaimed Chinese auteur filmmaker Jia Zhang-ke has set “We Shall Be All” as his next feature directing project. It is his first in the five years since his “Ash Is Purest White,” which premiered in Cannes in 2018. Describing the project as a “dismantling of dystopia,” Jia says that the new film is set across the first two decades of the 21st century and tells the story of how a Chinese woman lives to herself in silence, celebrating the prosperous Belle Epoque with songs and dance. Some 22 years in the making, the film’s first elements were shot as far back as 2001. The balance will be filmed later this year. No release schedule has been indicated.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” grabbed top place at the mainland China box office over the weekend with an opening $17.2 million (RMB122 million) score. Giant screen company, Imax reports that $2.7 million, or more than 16% of the film’s China total, came from its Middle Kingdom venues. Chinese online ticketing agency Maoyan forecasts that “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” will earn a total of RMB241 million or $34 million at current exchange rates. “Fast X,” which had driven off with the spoils for the past two weekends, was overtaken on its third lap and achieved $7.7 million in second place, according to data from consultancy firm Artisan Gateway. After 17 days in Chinese cinemas, “Fast X” has accumulated $124 million, making it the highest-grossing imported titled released this year in China ahead of Japanese animation “Suzume.”

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The 25th Shanghai International Film Festival, June 9 to 18, has unveiled the titles in contention for awards in its four main feature-length sections: main competition, Asian New Talent, Animation film and documentary. These are eligible for the festival’s prestigious Golden Goblet Awards, winners of which will be announced at the Shanghai Grand Theater on the evening of June 17. While SIFF remains the only mainland China festival to be accredited as a so-called A-list event by the International Federation of Film Producers (FIAPF), its selections are largely separate and distinct from those at other major international festivals.

Shanghai International Film Festival (SIFF) has unveiled the major competition selections for its 25th edition (June 9-18), which will be the first to be held in a fully physical format with international guests since before the pandemic. 

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief China’s NetEase Games has established PinCool, a Tokyo-based game studio focused on developing titles for game consoles. That is a significant diversification, considering that PC and mobile are the major formats for games play in China. And the company says the company it will also be involved in planning and producing a range of additional forms of entertainment. The new company is headed by representative director and president Ichimura Ryutaro, a 20-year veteran of the games industry and long-time producer of the “Dragon Quest” games franchise. Beyond serving as lead producer for games such as “Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King” and “Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies,” Ichimura also led other areas of the Dragon Quest IP franchise including live events and exhibitions.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief NBCUniversal (NBCU) and JioCinema, Viacom18’s streaming service, have entered into a multi-year partnership bringing thousands of hours of NBCU films and TV series to India. Content is sourced from the Universal Television, UCP, Universal International Studios, Universal Television Alternative Studio, Sky Studios, DreamWorks Animation, Universal Pictures, Focus Features and Bravo brands. NBCU’s programming will live in a Peacock branded hub starting next month on JioCinema’s newly announced “JioCinema Premium” SVOD tier. While JioCinema has been making an audience impact with free-of-charge screenings of the ongoing IPL cricket tournament, the first content announced on the subscription tier hailed from another recent deal with Warner Bros Discovery.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Fast X” predictably won a second weekend on top of the mainland China box office, driving its total past the $100 million mark. But the disappointing start for Disney’s live-action “The Little Mermaid” was the bigger talking point. “Fast X” earned $17.6 million in China according to data from consultancy Artisan Gateway. That was a 66% drop compared with its opening weekend, but still gave the film a $110 million cumulative after 12 days and has caused estimates to be further revised upwards. Ticketing agency Maoyan is now forecasting that the film will finish with RMB880 million ($126 million), having previously predicted RMB728 million ($104 million), and then RMB840 million.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The U.K.’s London Indian Film Festival and Birmingham Indian Film Festival will work together to present a two-city, two-part panoply of feature and short films, kicking off next month with “The Storyteller.” Directed by Ananth Mahadevan, “The Storyteller” sees Adil Hussain play a Gujarati businessman who believes that once physical wealth is accumulated, happiness will follow, but this proves not to be the case. Paresh Rawal plays the titular storyteller. The film is based on a story by the late, great Bengali filmmaker Satyajit Ray and contrasts the pursuit of material wealth with that of intellectual knowledge. Hussain, co-star Tannishtha Chatterjee and Mahadevan are expected to be on hand for Q&A sessions on June 22 at BFI Southbank and on June 23 at MAC Birmingham.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The Sundance Film Festival Asia, an offshoot of the Sundance Institute, is to set up camp in Taipei, Taiwan this summer. The three-day mini festival will run Aug. 18-20 and be put together in association with local organizer G2Go Entertainment. The event will showcase a handful of films curated by the Sundance Institute and host a short film competition that is open only to Taiwanese productions. Panel discussions will accompany the festival to foster artistic exchange, providing opportunities for the Taiwan film industry to connect with Sundance’s executive team, and elevating Taiwan’s image and presence in the global independent film industry. 

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Magic Fair, a Miami-Paris based indie sales company and Hong Kong- and Paris-based All Rights Entertainment have launched rights sales on upcoming feature animation “Pigsy,” directed by Chiu Li-Wei (“Barkley”) during the Cannes Film Festival’s Marche du Film. The film is a reimagining of the classic Chinese tale “Journey to the West.” The story follows a self-absorbed and lazy pig on a journey to lasting happiness. Set in a distant future, the film sees Pigsy embark on a deceitful quest for a better life, only to find that true happiness may be closer than he thinks. The production has recently added Taiwanese stars Greg Han, Liu Kuan-Ting, Harlem Yu, Tuo Tsung-Hua, Chung Hsin-Ling, Ivy Shao, Waa Wei and K.R. Bros. The film is to be completed in time for release at Chinese New Year in early 2024. Production is by the Netherland’s studio Submarine (“Where is Anne Frank,” TV series “Undone” Season 2, “Apollo 10 ½ : A Space Age Childhood”) with Taiwan’s Greener Grass (“GrX”) and Studio2 (“Barkley,” “Get the Hell Out,” “The Tag-Along”).

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Mainland Chinese star Wang Luodan (“The Dead End,” “Struggle,” “The Continent”) and Hong Kong-born Bosco Wong (“Lives of Omission,” “Triumph In The Skies”) head the cast of “My Dearest Stranger.” The high-end suspense drama series is a production fronted by mainland Chinese distributor-producer Hishow Entertainment, which announced the production at the Cannes Market, adjacent to the Cannes Film Festival in France. Based on the best-selling novel “Secret Love,” by Fan Shu and adapted by renowned screenwriter Cao Xueping (“Game Changer”), “My Dearest Stranger” tells a compelling story of Yu Xiao, a housewife who realizes her seemingly perfect husband may have a dark side. Yu decides to cooperate with policeman Song Cheng to find out the truth, while trying to keep her own secrets from the world.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Fast & Furious 10” (aka “Fast X”) dominated the mainland China box office with a strong opening weekend and a revved up opening five days. Data from consultancy firm Artisan Gateway shows Fast X scored $51.1 million between Friday and Sunday, to comfortably top the Chinese box office, with a 58% market share. Unusually, the film opened on a Wednesday. Over five days, it accumulated $77.4 million.Imax reported that the film pulled in $8.4 million from China, accounting for 11 of the China market opening, from fewer than 1% of the screens in the market. The figures reflect the five-day score, not the conventional weekend.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “In Our Day,” the film by South Korean auteur Hong Sang-soo which closes the Directors’ Fortnight section of the Cannes film festival, has seen distributors in multiple territories move early to strike rights deals. French rights were picked up by Capricci), Spanish rights by L’Atalante Cinema and Greek rights by Ama Films. The film has its official premiere on May 25. Seoul-based Finecut has long been the sales agent for Hong’s plentiful output. In addition to the deals on “In Our Day,” Finecut signed agreements with L’Atalante, with France’s Ariona Films and Taiwan’s Cola Films for “In Water,” Hong’s first film of 2023 which premiered in the Encounters section in Berlin in February. The film was previously sold to Cinema Guild for North America.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Amanda Nell Eu’s “Tiger Stripes,” which had its premiere this week in Cannes Film Festival’s Critics’ Week, is being celebrated as a punchy female-driven debut feature and as the first film by a Malaysian woman director in any section Cannes. The story focuses on a small group of 11 or 12-year-old girls. When one of the friends enters puberty she finds her body changing in unexpected ways. Relations with her friends and family start morphing too. Eu’s finished film straddles the metaphorical drama and body horror genres. “Tiger Stripes” is also a triumph for the now highly-developed global network of project markets, talent development programs, script and production workshops (often labelled as ‘labs’) and grant schemes. These are intended to encourage diversity and nurture film-making talent in countries where that is a rarity or where commercial films crowd out more experimental art-house titles.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Alibaba, China’s e-commerce and entertainment giant, announced net profits of $10.6 billion for its financial year to the end of March, a year-on-year increase of 39%. The rebound was achieved on revenues of $126 billion that were up by just 2%. Using the group’s preferred non-GAAP measure to exclude extraordinary items, net income rose by a smaller 4%, but weighed in at over $20 billion. The importance of the overall figures has been rendered moot by Alibaba’s end of March announcement that it plans to transform itself from an operating company into a holding company, by allowing each of its six divisions to go their own way.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief More than two million people turned out on Wednesday to watch “Fast X” in Chinese movie theaters, spending a combined $15.3 million on the film on its first day of release. That made the tenth film in the “Fast & Furious” franchise a clear winner at the Chinese box office in an unusual midweek release. And it put “Fast X” on course to be the biggest Hollywood film so far this year in the world’s second largest movie market. Provisional data from local data service Ent Group showed that the film also enjoyed $2.83 million from previews on Tuesday. That gives an estimated $18.2 million total at the end of its first official day of release.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief China’s entertainment, social media and technology giant Tencent, renewed its profits growth in the first quarter of 2023, after reporting its first decline in 2022. And group revenue beat financial market estimates as China’s post-COVID reopening boosted economic activity. Overall revenues in the three months from January to March 2023 reached RMB150 billion ($21.4 billion), an increase of 11% year-on-year and 3% quarter-on-quarter. Net profits in the period came in at RMB25.8 billion ($3.69 billion), a 10% year-on-year improvement.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Net profits at Tencent Music Entertainment, China’s largest digital music operation, grew by 89% in the first quarter of the new year, hitting RMB1.15 billion ($167 million), even as revenue progressed by only 5% to RMB7.0 billion ($1.02 billion). The group, which is backed by Chinese tech and entertainment giant Tencent and has stock market listings on the New York Stock Exchange and in Hong Kong, controls large equity stakes in Spotify and (in a consortium with Tencent) Universal Music Group. Its own music operations divide loosely into two clusters: mass market music streaming, with paid-for and free tiers; and “social entertainment,” including karaoke and other derivative products.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief iQiyi, the Chinese video streamer that began a turnaround last year, reported further growth in profits in the first quarter of 2023. It said that daily subscription numbers had grown by 17 million in the past three months. Total revenues were RMB8.3 billion ($1.2 billion), increasing 15% year over year, the company said in a regulatory filing on Tuesday that covered the January to March period. Net income attributable to iQIYI was RMB618 million ($90.0 million), compared to net income attributable to iQIYI of RMB169 million in the same period in 2022. The average daily number of subscribing members, excluding trial memberships, for the quarter was 128.1 million, compared to 100.8 million for the same period in 2022 and 110.9 million for the fourth quarter in 2022. Subscription revenue per user was little changed at RMB14.35 ($2.07).