Upcoming projects by Chinese filmmaker Li Dongmei and Taiwan’s Lee Hong-chi are among 15 work-in-progress titles selected for the inaugural Festival of Young Cinema (Asia-Europe) in Macau, which will open with Ning Hao’s The Movie Emperor.
The WiP Lab will comprise 11 projects from mainland Chinese filmmakers and four international Chinese-language projects and will be screened in Macau and nearby Zhuhai from January 8-10.
A five-strong jury, who will grant awards in post-production services, include producers Jeremy Chua and Wang Yang, Mumbai Film Festival artistic director Deepti Dcunha, scriptwriter Wang Yixin and production and sales executive Esther Yeung.
Due to attend are representatives from 10 festivals including Cannes, Berlin, Rotterdam, Tokyo and Busan as well as international sales agents such as Fortissimo, Rediance, Parallax and Edko Films among others.
The titles include The Fruit by Chinese writer-director Li, whose debut Mama played in Giornate degli Autori at Venice in 2020 and won best film at Pingyao and Goteborg. The Fruit is based on the filmmaker’s own personal experience and follows a woman’s journey through the joy of pregnancy and sadness of a miscarriage.
I Am The Happiest Baby In The World is from Taiwanese actor-turned-filmmaker Lee, who feature directorial debut Love Is A Gun premiered in Critics’ Week at Venice last year, winning the Luigi De Laurentiis Award for best debut film. His follow-up centres on a woman who is struggling with work at a theatre while trying to find an apartment, which is compounded by not feeling well.
Further titles include The Wind Is Unstoppable by Huo Meng, who won the best director award at Pingyao in 2018 with Crossing The Border- Zhaoguan.
The industry screenings run parallel to the Festival of Young Cinema, which runs January 5-11 and aims to serve audiences from Macau, Hong Kong and mainland China.
The public-facing festival will open on Friday with Ning Hao’s The Movie Emperor, which debuted at Toronto and was set as the closing film at Busan.
The programme will also include filmmaker masterclasses with Japan’s Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Iran’s Amir Naderi, Russia’s Alexey German Jr, Hong Kong’s Yonfan and Filipino director Lav Diaz. There will also be filmmaker conversations between Li Dongmei and Lee Hong-Chi as well as Italy’s Gabriel Menetti and India’s Anurag Kashyap.
The festival has been launched by Marco Mueller, a former director at Venice, Rome and Locarno film festivals, who has been based in China since 2021. He previously told Screen that this inaugural event would be the “zero edition” and would prove a testing ground for future editions.
Festival of Young Cinema (Asia-Europe) WiP Lab
Mainland Projects
The Wind Is Unstoppable
Dir. HUO Meng
The Fruit
Dir. LI Dongmei
Stars And The Moon
Dir. TANG Yongkang
The Botanist In The White House
Dir. JING Yi
I Am The Happiest Baby In The World
Dir. LEE Hong-Chi
Man Without Woman
Dir. CHANG Biao
Aroma Dream
Dir. MA Xue
Water Can Go Anywhere
Dir: FANG Liang
Another Green World
Dir. WANG Kejing
Twenty-Four Flavors
Dir. Elaine HUANG
When The Bottle Turns
Dir. LUO Dan
Macau and International Projects
Revisit (Macau-China)
Dir. Huang Tingting
The Violin Case (Macau-China)
Dir. Maxim Bessmertny
Chasing The Sun (France)
Dir. HUANG Ruosong
Birth (France)
Dir. Cici LI
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