Celebrating its ninth edition this year, Pingyao International Film Festival (PYIFF), founded by Chinese auteur Jia Zhangke, has become a key event for promoting Chinese cinema at home and overseas, as well as bringing international cinema to Chinese audiences.
Held at Pingyao Festival Palace – a purpose-built screening complex in the UNESCO World Heritage site of Pingyao Ancient City in Shanxi province – the festival has been hosting packed screenings over the past week for international films including One Battle After Another, The Secret Agent, Sentimental Value, My Father’s Shadow and The President’s Cake.
Chinese films drawing attention in the festival include Cai Shangjun’s The Sun Rises On Us All, which screened as the ‘Pingyao Surprise’ after its Venice bow and best actress win, while Bi Gan’s Cannes award-winning Resurrection screens as the closing film today.
Cinephiles from all over China travel to Pingyao in the west of China for the festival, which especially for young people, has the advantage of being cheaper to find food and accommodation than bigger cities such as Shanghai and Beijing.
One of Jia’s aims for the festival is to get more international films distributed in Chinese theatres and he says several of the titles that screened last year were subsequently acquired by Chinese distributors. “Over the past two years, there’s been a clear rise in the number of international films screening in China, especially an increase in independent movies, and the genres have become more diverse,” Jia tells Deadline.
In March this year, Jia became a Chinese distributor himself, launching Unknown Pleasures Pictures (UPP) with veteran distributor Tian Qi and scoring a hit with the company’s first release, Italian drama There’s Still Tomorrow, which grossed $6M. Since then, UPP has also distributed Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush, marking 100 years since the classic film’s first release. To mark the occasion, the film’s China premiere was held in Shanghai’s Grand Cinema, a historic site bedecked with marble and a sweeping staircase, where the film had its first Chinese premiere in the 1920s.
“We were encouraged by the fact that the film didn’t just have a few screenings in festivals or archives, but was embraced by a bigger audience in a wide release,” says Jia, who seems quietly amused by the fact that, in a market where young people are consuming vast quantities of micro-drama, there’s also a space for silent cinema classics.
UPP’s upcoming slate including Cannes award winners The Secret Agent, from Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho, and Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value; Japanese films Love On Trial, directed by Koji Fukada, and Two Seasons, Two Strangers, from Sho Miyake, which just won Locarno’s Golden Leopard; and Andrea Segre’s historical biopic The Great Ambition, about Italian Communist Party leader Enrico Berlinguer.
All of these films are receiving Gala or Special Screenings here at PYIFF and will be released by UPP in Chinese theatres in the latter part of 2025 and early next year.
In addition to showcasing international films, PYIFF aims to promote Chinese arthouse cinema, a task Jia says is as essential as ever at a time when Chinese cinemas and social media are focused on big commercial hits. “Chinese arthouse films are able to get theatrical distribution, that’s not the major problem, but we want to help them achieve the kind of commercial success that matches their artistic value,” Jia explains.
It’s been a good year for Chinese cinema internationally with Huo Meng’s Living The Land winning a Silver Bear for Best Director in Berlin and The Sun Rises On Us All and Resurrection taking prizes in Cannes and Venice. “But we can’t claim that there’s an overall change in the cinematic environment in China,” says Jia. “Nor can we claim a big revival. But we can see that, in a complex environment, some Chinese directors still manage to demonstrate their creativity.”
PYIFF invites international festival programmers – Cannes’ Christian Jeune is a regular visitor – and the Asia-based heads of international sales agencies to support distribution of Chinese cinema in international markets. The festival has a big emphasis on emerging filmmakers and features two section that give out awards to first, second and third-time feature directors – the Crouching Tigers section, which is dedicated to international titles, and is this year screening films such as My Father’s Shadow, Lost Land and The President’s Cake, and the Hidden Dragons section, which focuses on Chinese-language movies.
This year, Hidden Dragons is screening 11 films, of which five are world premieres, including Shen Ko-shang’s Deep Quiet Room, and the Asian premieres of films including Tan Siyou’s Toronto title Amoeba and Li Dongmei’s IFFR premiere Guo Ran.
Jia acknowledges it’s a busy time in the international, and especially Asian, film festival calendar, but that this current slot in the last week of September is working well. For one thing, it’s much more comfortable to sit through screenings in the festival’s Platform open-air theatre, compared to some previous editions held in October and November.
The timing this year means that PYIFF is taking place immediately after Busan International Film Festival (BIFF), which moved forward a few weeks due to holidays and other events in South Korea (although it’s expected to move back to October next year). “We’ll probably hold to the same slot next year,” says Jia. “We have a good communication with Busan and would like to support them. We were less stringent this year in terms of requirements for premieres, so that films could screen in Busan before coming here”.
PYIFF is also presenting this year’s International Contribution to Chinese Cinema Award to BIFF co-founder Kim Dong-ho and hosting a Masterclass Dialogue ‘Once Upon A Time In Busan’ tomorrow, with speakers including Kim, Jia, BIFF director Jung Hanseok and Korean Chinese filmmaker Zhang Lu, who just won BIFF’s Best Film Award for Gloaming In Luomu.
In addition to being a distributor, Jia is also planning to get involved in the financing of international films through the Wings International fund, which aims to provide support to about five films from non-Chinese directors each year. Jia says the initiative, which was first announced at PYIFF in 2023, finished raising the necessary finance from private investors last month and is in talks with Hong Kong International Film Festival about a joint collaboration starting in 2026.
Somehow, in the midst of wearing all these caps, Jia also has time to write a script for his next film as director, following his 2024 Caught By The Tides, which premiered in Cannes competition. Describing his new project as a “road movie without cars”, the as-yet-untitled film follows a journey from China’s northwest to the south of the enormous country. Jia says he plans to start shooting in December. Further details are still under wraps.
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