The Shanghai International Film Festival unveiled the main competition lineup for its Golden Goblet Awards over the weekend, with all 12 titles bowing as world premieres — a first in the section’s history, according to the festival. The 28th edition runs June 12-21.
Three of the main competition entries are Chinese-language productions, all from emerging directors. In total, 49 titles across five competitive sections are vying for prizes, drawn from a record submission pool of roughly 4,100 films from 125 countries and regions.
The main competition spans 15 countries and territories. The Chinese-language entries are Zhong Kaifeng’s Atlantic Rhapsody and Liu Xiaoyang’s The Great Skull, both from the mainland, and Frankie Tam Gong-Yuen’s Secret in the Box, a mainland–Hong Kong co-production. Atlantic Rhapsody is said to blend drama, comedy and fantasy in a story about a supermarket stock clerk left sleepless and hearing voices after he accidentally cooks a shark. The Great Skull, a dark comedy starring Wen Qi, Ni Hongjie and Yu Entai, follows a soon-to-graduate young woman and her mother as they contend with a “funeral committee” her father had quietly arranged before his sudden death. Secret in the Box, led by Zhang Songwen, Patrick Tam and Isabella Leong, draws on Hong Kong’s 1970s “Box Murder Case” — the first local case cracked through forensic evidence — in a story about a convicted man who protests his innocence for decades and the young investigator who keeps digging.
The only other Asian title in the section is Indonesian director Ismail Basbeth’s My Own Last Supper, with Europe securing most of the rest of the slots. Germany lands two entries, Josef Brandl’s Superbuhei and Susanne Heinrich’s The Miserable Mother, the latter sharing its world premiere with the Munich International Film Festival, alongside Reis Çelik’s Turkey-Germany co-production Night of Blindness, Nicolás Rincón Gille’s Belgian title Iluminada, Alan Minas’s Brazil-U.K. co-production Luiza’s Desert, Daniil Merkulov’s Russian entry Sea Sons, Yassine El Idrissi’s Moroccan feature Halima and Louis Godbout’s Canadian entry The Parking Spot.
The all-world-premiere main competition makes clear that SIFF would rather be a launchpad for new talent than a downstream showcase for prominent prestige titles already circulating on the festival circuit.
Hong Kong actor Tony Leung Chiu-wai presides over the seven-member main competition jury. The panel includes Chinese director Guan Hu, whose Black Dog won the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes in 2024; Georgian writer-director Déa Kulumbegashvili, whose April played in competition at Venice in 2024; Mexican filmmaker Fernanda Valadez, who took the World Cinema Dramatic Audience Award at Sundance in 2020; Chinese actress Xin Zhilei, named best actress at Venice last year for The Sun Rises on Us All; Tunisian producer Dora Bouchoucha; and Kyrgyz director Aktan Arym Kubat.
The Asian New Talent section, reserved for debut and second features by Asian directors, features 12 titles this year. Once again, all are world premieres except Thai director Sompot Chidgasornpongse’s 9 Temples to Heaven, which debuted in Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes in May. Chinese-language titles again dominate, including Zhang Hanyi’s Cassowary, Gong Yiwen’s Her First Taste, Liu Shichuan’s No Hard Feelings, Wan Bo’s Strangers in the Mountain and Mak Tin Shu’s mainland–Hong Kong co-production Dog Day Evening. Singaporean filmmaker Anthony Chen, whose Ilo Ilo won the Cannes Camera d’Or in 2013, chairs the section’s jury.
The documentary and animation competitions present five titles apiece, rounded out by 10 live-action and five animated shorts. U.S. filmmaker Geeta Gandbhir chairs the documentary jury and British animator Will Becher heads the animation panel.
The festival opens June 12 with Afterpiece, a Hong Kong psychological drama produced by Derek Yee and directed by first-time feature filmmaker Keane T.K. Wong. The film, which grew out of the Hong Kong government’s Directors’ Succession Scheme, stars Stephen Fung as a blocked stage director who becomes dangerously entangled with a young actress during casting.
SHANGHAI’S 28TH GOLDEN GOBLET AWARDS — FULL SELECTION
Main Competition
Atlantic Rhapsody, Zhong Kaifeng (China)
Halima, Yassine El Idrissi (Morocco)
Iluminada, Nicolás Rincón Gille (Belgium)
Luiza’s Desert, Alan Minas (Brazil, U.K.)
My Own Last Supper, Ismail Basbeth (Indonesia)
Night of Blindness, Reis Çelik (Turkey, Germany)
Sea Sons, Daniil Merkulov (Russia)
Secret in the Box, Frankie Tam Gong-Yuen (China, Hong Kong)
Superbuhei, Josef Brandl (Germany)
The Great Skull, Liu Xiaoyang (China)
The Miserable Mother, Susanne Heinrich (Germany, France)
The Parking Spot, Louis Godbout (Canada)
Asian New Talent
9 Temples to Heaven, Sompot Chidgasornpongse (Thailand)
About the Mother, Büşra Bülbül (Turkey)
Boomah, Zaid Abu Hamdan (Jordan, Saudi Arabia)
Cassowary, Zhang Hanyi (China)
Dog Day Evening, Mak Tin Shu (China, Hong Kong)
Her First Taste, Gong Yiwen (China)
Hunter’s Moon, Ridham Janve (India, Germany)
No Good in Sight: A Story, Alibi Mukushev (Kazakhstan)
No Hard Feelings, Liu Shichuan (China)
Skylark, Narghiza Dotieva (Kyrgyzstan)
Strangers in the Mountain, Wan Bo (China)
The Blind Girl and an Elephant, Ishtiyak Ahmad Zihad (Bangladesh, Germany)
Documentary
Benigno, David Baute (Spain)
Notes Unheard, Gu Yun (China)
Ruins, Elena Chemerska (North Macedonia, Croatia, Slovenia)
The Tiger of the East, Jorge Acevedo (Chile)
Wheels of Forgotten Dreams, Milos Ljubomirovic, Danilo Lazovic (Serbia, Bulgaria, Croatia)
Animation
Amadeo and the Hypothetical New World, Brenda Lígia, Edu Felistoque (Brazil)
Dante, Linda Hambäck (Sweden, Norway, Denmark)
Garuda: Dare to Dream, Ronny Gani (Indonesia)
Lucy Lost, Olivier Clert (France)
Winnipeg, Seeds of Hope, Elio Guiroga, Beñat Beitia (Spain, Chile, Argentina)
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