China’s animation sector shines at Shanghai Film Fest

The spotlight will be shining both on what’s happening in Chinese animation right now and on what is about to emerge from the genre as the 25th Shanghai International Film Festival, which opened Friday, plays out until June 18, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The festival’s main Golden Goblet Awards have lined up five films from five countries for its Animation Film section, and they include the hotly anticipated Master Zhong from Chinese streamer iQiYi.

The film takes its place in the competition alongside the Iran-Turkey co-production Dolphin Boy (directed by Mohammad Kheirandish), Hungary’s Four Souls Of Coyote (Aron Gauder), Gonta: The Story Of The Two-Named Dog In The Fukushima Disaster (Akio Nishizawa) from Japan and the Belgium-France-Spain effort The Inseparables (Jérémie Degruson).

Expectation in China has been building around the latest effort from the Beijing-based Light Chaser Animation studio, Chang’an San Wan Li (30,000 miles from Chang’an), which is set for a July 8 domestic release but also has its producers looking to capture an international audience.

“Chang’an is an epic animation feature film that is different from any previous animation films Light Chaser or other animation studios have produced,” he said. “It tells the real stories of the poets of the prime time of Tang dynasty, about 1300 years ago.

These poets’ names are household known, their poems are in textbooks, but their stories are much less known and have never been told in such an epic way.”