The organizing committee of the 8th annual Beijing International Film Festival announced Friday the films that will open and close the festival, as well as the 15 titles that will compete for Tiantan Awards.
After careful selection from the year's best Chinese and foreign films, the organizers said they eventually picked "A or B," directed by Ren Pengyuan and produced by and starring Xu Zheng, as the opening film, which tells the story of a thrilling financial conspiracy surrounding a billionaire.
Closing the festival will be Mongolian-Chinese director Hasi Chaolu's film "Genghis Khan," a historical drama about the legendary founder and first Great Khan of the Mongol Empire. The film was produced by the renowned French director-producer Jean-Jacques Annaud.
The festival will feature advanced screenings of both films, which are scheduled for wide release in China on April 28.
The festival's Tiantan Award jury will be chaired by the Hong Kong-based director Wong Kar-wai, who will be joined by other jury members Rob Cohen, Duan Yihong, Jan A. P. Kaczmarek, Calin Peter Netzer, Ruben Östlund and Shu Qi. The team will select ten award winners, including best picture, best director and best actors, and will present trophies to the winners at the festival's closing ceremony.
Fifteen films from 659 submissions from China and overseas were shortlisted for the awards, the organizers said at the press conference. Two Chinese films—the military action blockbuster "Operation Red Sea" and a poverty relief art-house film "Hold Your Hands"—will be entered, along with 13 foreign films including the French film "Dog," the Finnish and German co-production "The Other Side of Hope" and the Iranian film "Untaken Paths."
The 8th Beijing International Film Festival will take place from April. 15-22, 2018. The "Beijing Film Panorama" series will open its online ticket sales on April 1, offering a carnival for movie buffs of recent favorite blockbusters as well as old Chinese classics. The organizers also announced that about 80 films will have affiliate events or salons throughout the course of the festival.
The committee further revealed that virtual reality and other high-tech, visual effects, as well as science films and documentaries, will also play a major role in the festival.
The shortlist of film titles to race for the Tiantan Awards:
- Jan Svěrák's "Barefoot" (Czech Republic)
- Nila Madhab Panda's "Dark Wind" (India)
- Mariam Khatchvani's "Dede" (Georgia/Qatar/Ireland/Netherlands/Croatia)
- Samuel Benchetrit's "Dog" (France)
- Kim Nguyen's "Eye on Juliet" (Canada)
- Miao Yue's "Hold Your Hands" (China)
- Saul Dibb's "Journey's End" (United Kingdom)
- Roberta Durrant's "Krotoa" (South Africa)
- Serge loan Celebidachi's "Octave" (Romania)
- Dante Lam's "Operation Red Sea" (China)
- Ana Urushadze's "Scary Mother" (Georgia/Estonia)
- Ebrahim Irajzad's "Searing Summer" (Iran)
- Aki Kaurismäki's "The Other Side of Hope" (Finland/Germany)
- Amichai Greenberg's "The Testament" (Israel/Austria)
- Tahmineh Milani's "Untaken Paths" (Iran)
Source: china.org by zhang rui