TIFF Market Screenings Offer “Three-Dimensional” View of Contemporary China
Five Chinese productions are being presented in market screenings on the sidelines of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival in an effort, organizers of the program say, to give North American audiences a “three-dimensional” view into contemporary China.
Put together by the China Film Co-Production Corporation (CFCC), the selection includes comedian Da Peng’s box office hit Post Truth ($98 million), which focuses on how a former gang boss-turned-burial plot salesman deals with online rumors.
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There’s also the pandemic lockdown-themed romance Embrace Again from director Xue Xiaolu, whose breakthrough rom-com Finding Mr. Right (2013) was famously credited with an upsurge in Chinese tourism to Seattle.
Two romance-tinged films from director Yan are also screening this week: Love Never Ends, a tale of old-age friendship and love with a winning turn from Hong Kong action veteran Tony Leung Ka-fai (Election), and Viva La Vida, which follows the relationship that develops between two young people suffering from serious illnesses. Rounding out the selection is the Mo Dai-directed crime-drama Endless Journey, starring Zhang Yi (from Zhang Yimou’s Cliff Walkers) as a disgraced ex-cop out to clear his name.
Four of those films — Post Truth, Love Never Ends, Endless Journey, and Viva La Vida — have been picked up for North American distribution by the Ontario-based Niu Vision Media Ltd. Last year the company bought three-time Oscar-nominated Chinese director Zhang’s 2023 box office hit Full River Red — which grossed $650 million in China — and released the thriller across 150 North American screens for an estimated $3 million gross.
Wang Mengxi, the company’s CEO, believes that when it comes to an overseas audience for Chinese cinema the general rule in recent years has been “suspense and comedy” and she points to two other recent successes as proof.
Last year’s Ao Shen-directed internet-scam-themed thriller, No More Bets, grossed $2 million for Niu Vision Media while author-turned-filmmaker Han Han’s motorsports comedy Pegasus 2 took in $1.8 million.
“The audience age range is 15-45 years old,” says Wang. “We’ve found this group is well-educated and they know what they like. On the other hand, they are hard to service, too. What they are after is high production quality and a well-known cast, as well as attractive plots.”
Those boxes were all ticked by Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), the film that remains far and away the biggest hit in terms of Chinese-language films and the North American box office.
Taiwanese-born director Ang Lee’s dig into the realms of the wuxia martial arts romantic-fantasy genre raked in an estimated $128 million while scooping an unprecedented 10 Oscar nominations, winning four, including Best Foreign Language Film.
While Chinese-language cinema has continued to expand and evolve in the 24 years since that Hong Kong-China-U.S. co-production was released, box office successes since have been more surprises rather than part of any sustained trend or shift in the viewing habits of North American audiences.
The most recent film to raise eyebrows was this year’s comedy-drama Yolo (New Classics Pictures, Yuewen Media), a vehicle for the popular Chinese comic Jia Ling which sees her play a young woman whose life is transformed by boxing. After the film collected around $480 million from the Chinese box office, it was picked up for North American distribution by Sony Pictures this past March, and released across 200 screens for a collection of $1.5 million across a 10-day run. Sony has since announced plans for an English-language remake of Jia’s breakthrough hit, the time-traveling comedy Hi, Mom (2021), which took $840 million from the Chinese box office.
“The market for Chinese films in North America is changing. After the pandemic, audience behavior has changed,” says Niu Vision Media’s Wang. “If the movie is not strong enough in the Chinese market, it will highly affect the box office performance in the North American market directly. This is a tough year for distribution companies, too. Audience expectations are higher than before.”
Both Love Never Ends and Viva La Vida come from China’s Shanghai-based Lian Ray Pictures, co-producers of Hong Kong director Derek Tsang’s Oscar-nominated school bullying drama Better Days in 2019.
“Love Never Ends focuses on the love among the elderly that is rarely touched upon in Chinese films,” a Lian Ray Pictures representative told THR via email. “The most attractive thing about this film is the love and courage these elderly couples show at the end of their lives. By telling the story of individual emotional growth under universal values, Viva La Vida delves into issues such as life, disease, love and family responsibilities.”
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