Experience Counts for Chinese Auteurs in Shanghai Film Festival Competition
variety.comShanghai International Film Festival represent a showcase of directors who are also known-quantities, but who are worthy of higher profiles. (The festival’s Asian Talent selection has a further selection of six more directors seeking to break through.) The competition quartet fall into two pairs (a seventh and eighth generation maybe): the latest works of Guan Hu and the rarely seen Gu Changwei on one hand; and a younger generation of auteurs, Wei Shujun and Zhang Dalei.
Guan is in need of rehabilitation after his 2019 war film was selected as the Shanghai festival’s opening film but experienced a last-minute cancellation due to the intervention of unforeseen layers of censorship.
The film lost its local release, causing financial misery for its backers. It was released a year later, but with clumsy and obvious cuts.
Guan’s shaggy dog tale “Black Dog” won the top prize last month of Un Certain Regard last month in Cannes. And Xin, the film’s canine star, claimed the runner-up prize in the unofficial Palm Dog competition for good measure.
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