The competition lineup for the Shanghai International Film Festival 2024 has been announced. While it doesn’t feature any titles from the US or South Korea, there is still plenty to look forward to, with an abundance of exciting world premieres—which should truly make for an amazing festival. Vietnamese-French director Tran Anh Hung (The Taste of Things) will serve as the Jury president alongside a diverse group of filmmakers from across the globe. But what slate of films will they be choosing from?
European world premieres include the Spanish film “A Bathroom of One’s Own” from newcomer Lucía Casañ Rodríguez, the German “Another German Tank Story” from Jannis Alexander Kiefer, Vito Plamieri’ss “Her Second Chance” from Italy, “The Divorce” from Kazakhstan director Daniyar Salamat, “Snowflakes in My Yard” from Georgian Bakur Bakuradze, and France’s “Chasing Johnny,” directed by Baptise Debraux about a young activist wanted by the police after a robbery gone wrong.
This will premiere alongside a slew of Chinese premieres. Guan Hu, fresh from winning the Un Certain Regard award for Best Film with “Black Dog” at this year’s Cannes, premieres his latest “A Man and a Woman”. Wei Shujun’s “Don’t Worry Be Happy” is about a man trying to keep positive despite his mother falling ill. Zhang Dalei’s “Starfall” is about a man who quits his job to fight the environmental decay of his hometown.
International premieres of Mariano Gonzalez’s Argentinian film “Adult”, Mipo O’s “Living in Two Worlds”, Bangladeshi director Kamar Ahmad Simons “Silence of the Seashell”, and Iran’s “The Wasteland” from Ahmad Bahrami’s round out the competition lineup. These in-competition films will join a slate of 11 films from the Asian New Talent Competition, highlighting an eclectic array of films from previously unknown talents, five films in the animation section, and five documentaries, all vying for the attention of the attendees of Shanghai film festival.
