Without a summons

What can be shown at the Shanghai Film Festival and how Russia participates in it

In June, the Shanghai Film Festival was held - the most important Asian film, which annually gathering tens of thousands of spectators. There are almost no politics in his competitive films, but there are a lot of unfinished pain. This year, Russia was presented in the competition only by an animated short film, but it announced a new “Cheburashka” and even a film with Yegor Creed.

About how a large film festival looks like in China, what Russia is shown and remembered there is in the material of Novy-Europe.

As films in Shanghai show

A third of the shows of the Shanghai Film Festival this year was sold out in the first hour of sales. The most popular was the show of Crazy Summer, Cao Baopin on the last day of the festival - it was sold in 26 seconds. True, when tickets appeared, no one knew which film would show. The session was called "Golden Cup" for the best directing .

Shanghai, like any major festival, works: the film is taken to the competition, it wins some reward, it is noticed by spectators and critics. This increases the chances of wider and successful rental, which means to earnings. But besides money, participation in the festival is about the status and name in the industry, which needs new votes and talents.

Dozens of cinema halls throughout the city were filled not only by competitive films. Every year, within the framework of the Shanghai Film Festival, the restoration of classical cinema, the premiere of new foreign films, such as Brautist Brady Corbet and “Sinners” by Ryan Kugler, or retrospectives of recognized directors - this time David Lynch and Ansi Varda are shown. To get to the desired (primarily competitive) session is especially difficult for journalists and filmmakers: there were no special press accounts, this festival for the people. You can try to book a ticket on the online platform: a minute after the appearance, they disappear. Or come to the press center and beg for a long time: I did this.

“I wanted to watch the film“ The Son of my father ”, but it didn’t work out - there were no tickets,” the producer from France, who came to the festival, tells me. A month ago, he went to Cannes and there he liked it more - better organization.

Funny, at first glance, comparison with the Cannes Film Festival is not accidental: the Shanghai Film Festival is one of the 14 international viewers that are accredited by the International Federation of Associations of Film Producers (FiaPF) and are part of the A (festivals with a competition of full -length films). This accreditation requires compliance with certain standards, but it puts Shanghai on a par with the festivals of the "Big Three": Cannes, Venice and Berlin. However, until 2022, the Moscow International Film Festival also had such accreditation.

This year, the 27th film festival in Shanghai was already held: it launched back in 1993, when China pursued a policy of openness to the world. Over the years, the festival has opened several important names in the cinema for Asia, for example, the already mentioned Cao Baopin, who made his debut there with the film “Hooligans” in 2006, and later participated in large European watches. Shanghai became one of the festivals, where in 2017 the experimental animated film “Van Gogh. With love, Vincent ”, completely painted with oil on the boards. He later received a nomination for Oscar and showed himself perfectly at the box office, collecting more than 40 million dollars (of which more than 700 thousand in Russia).

The Shanghai festival is still about openness today, but as much as the party leadership allows. In this year, there are films about complex topics, such as rape and collapsing winding institutions, but events take place either not in China or in the past, which means they are censorship. A LGBT-patch that cannot be noticed at any European review is absent here at all. Going to the cinema, you get into a special vacuum: there are disputed topics, but they were agreed; The movie still seems relevant, but not the most.

The victory of traditional values

In my opinion, the main topics of the festival were family and aging. In the Portuguese-Brazilian film “The smell of remembered things”, Jose Martins (received a prize as the “best actor”) plays an old-racist who is experiencing flashbacks from the military past and tries to cope with PTSD. In the Spanish thriller “rebirth”, two brothers alternately betray each other because of participation in mafia groups. And in the Chilean drama "After the fog" it is studied as an infantile family is able to injure their own eight -year -old child. In each of these films, it turns out that the main problems in life are unsonant.

The animated short film of Jeanne Bekmambetova “Son” also explores the theme of the family - this was the only Russian film in the competition, moreover, a joint production with Kazakhstan. Bekmambetova has already won in Shanghai-in 2018 with the painting “Chick-Chirik”. In 2025, she managed to do this again: “Son” became the best animated short meter of the festival. This is a touching story about a father who brings up a boy with children's cerebral paralysis.

“Father does not know how to return the joy of life to him,” Jeanne Bekmambetova tells about his work. - Until one day there is no news on the TV on the Mars -Road, which is planted on Mars. The boy falls in love with this rover, feels a connection with him, and this gives him inspiration to live on.

The main film of the festival was recognized as “black, red, yellow” by the famous Kyrgyz director Aktan Aryma Kubat. He adapted the stories of the writer Topchugүl Shaidullaeva about life in a village, where everyone knows each other. The main character Turgudul is a weaver who makes carpets for the whole district. Once she finds herself in the house of Kadyr - unhappy in marriage and an unemployed man. They fall in love with each other, but traditions become obstacles: if in the village someone learns about the novel on the side, both Turgudul and Kadyr will suffer. All this, by the way, occurs in the nineties - immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“Black, red, yellow” is not so much a criticism of the patriarchal village structure as a statement about love: real feelings are able to survive the years and save themselves, even if they are not allowed to go outside. First of all, this masterfully made cinema is socially important, thin, slow, but perfectly verified. Giving the main prize to this picture is a worthy decision from the jury, which was headed by Italian Giuseppe Tornator this year, known for the “New Cinema Paradiso”.

Another interesting film of the main competition is “Do you believe in angels, Mr. Drovak?” - The debut of the German Nicholas Steiner with famous actors Karl Markovich and Lars Audiger. This is a surreal movie about a drunkard and a cynic who was forced to take a course of a creative letter. Creativity returns him to the past and makes him return to his own injuries-through conversations with his heroes, angels and ... prying people (yes, he drinks so much!). It turned out not an ideal, but cheerful movie, in the spirit of the poem “Moscow -Petushka”, if Kirill Serebrennikov filmed it.

However, the main competition seemed weaker than the ASIAN New Talent program, an analogue of the Cannes “Special Glash”, which contains debut or second films of Asian directors. My beloved is the “Victoria” debutant from India Sivarangini J. The main character is a cosmetologist in a small beauty salon on the outskirts. On the way to work, she is almost forcibly handed a rooster (an important spiritual symbol for India) - for overexposure until the evening. Victoria spends all day with clients, a family drama, quarrels with a guy on the phone and ... a rooster in the corner. Before shooting, actress Minakshi Dzhaan worked for a month in a real beauty salon and eventually received a prize for the “best female role”. I am very happy for her and for this movie: a concise and cheerful story about how girls cope with falling problems, manage to work parallel and resist patriarchal principles.

The best film in the Asian New Talent section was the painting “Water is still flowing” - a Chinese movie about an old man who reflects his life and is trying to re -build family relations. This, I would say, excessively beautiful and philosophical history. The water, by the way, turned out to be one of the most popular metaphors at the festival. It physically appears in almost every film and even in the names of two more: the Chinese film “Water can deliver anywhere” and the film from Sri Lanka “Riverstone”. Water helps to return home, serves as a conductor between the world of the living and the world of the dead, and instilling in the hope that everything bad will pass.

From "Major" to "Son"

The victory of the “son” of Jeanne Bekmambetova is far from the only one for Russia in Shanghai. In 2013, Major Yuri Bykova became the winner of the main competition. In 2015, the prize for the “best operator work” received “Sunny Blow” by Nikita Mikhalkov - in the same year the jury was headed by Andrei Zvyagintsev. In 2017, the Bayopic of Ivan Bolotnikov “Harms” received two awards at once: for the “Best Scenario” and “Best Operator Work”. The same awards in 2021 were won by Alexei Kozlov with the film "Conscience". And last year, the best director of the film festival was recognized by Georgian Bakura Bakuradze for the film of joint with Russia production “Snow in my yard”.

However, the central industrial event of the festival is much more important for Russia. In recent years, dozens of Russian projects have been announced to him: first of all, commercial. It is difficult to evaluate how successfully something can be sold on a Shanghai film market, but in recent years, Russian blockbusters quite often went to local rental: “Calling”, “Movement Up”, “Attraction”, “Salut-7” and others.

On June 23, the next day after the closing of the festival, in the Shanghai exhibition center it is not easy. The huge building is filled with racks of different countries, films are sold: Türkiye, Kyrgyzstan, Slovenia, India, Georgia ... and, of course, China: dozens of projects of various scale, mainly commercial. The Russian stand stood out not only the size, but also the huge Led screen in the corner. XOVP showed how it uses these screens instead of chromakes to shoot a movie. In recent years, the Virtual Production technology has been used more actively, especially after the Mandalorets series, where it was much easier to shoot against the background of screens than against the background of chromakey, due to brilliant armor. It turned out that in Russia they can also and are already being removed for a long time.

On the same day, a presentation of Russian films and TV shows was held in one of the halls: in an hour twenty minutes, the dictator's voice spoke about several dozen projects. First of all, about the New Year's line-up-“Cheburashka 2”, “Finist.

The last hero ”and“ Pinocchio ”: films doomed to collect several billion rubles in winter holidays. Moreover, “Pinocchio” was very logically translated as “Pinocchio”, and at the same time in the trailer they said that Alexei Tolstoy wrote this Pinocchio.

The Voronezh animation studio showed the "Heroes of the Arctic" - an animated series, in the creation of which he took part in Rosatom. Lenfilm introduced the trailer for the “last price” of 2022 - it seems that the picture of the difficult life of the Slavs in Abkhazia (and where the Slavs are easy now!). But most of all I was impressed by the announcement of the thriller “down”: in this picture, Yegor Creed and Anfis Chernykh get stuck in the elevator elevator in Moscow City with a stranger who knows everything about them. The date of the Russian premiere was clearly chosen by chance - September 11.

Documentary films about the beauty of Russia, criminal series on NTV and historical at “Russia 1”. This film market did not show a single relevant and interesting art project: only history, bandits and family tales. However, the Russian rental now looks like this. Surely some of the films presented will appear in Chinese cinemas. The main thing is to get into a quota for foreign films; This is usually a few dozen per year. The state -owned company Roskino - it is through it that all Russian projects for the film market are passing - already reported that in China they will show the film “Red Silk”. It is believed that this is a joint Russian-Chinese production, so the film did not fall under restrictions for foreigners.

“Red Silk”, by the way, failed in the Russian box office and raised only about 700 million rubles with an 800 millionth budget. It is unlikely that rental in China will help the film pay off. It is rather a symbolic gesture-especially, the exit in the cinemas promises to the arrival of Vladimir Putin on the 80th anniversary of the victory over Japan.