Every year, the new works of many well-known directors around the world are the focus of the majority of movie fans. The "New Works by Famous Directors" unit of the Shanghai International Film Festival was born to meet the urgent needs of the audience. This year's "New Works by Famous Directors" unit, as always, has collected the latest masterpieces of the most important and representative group of famous directors, and presented the highest quality feast to fans at the first time. The first batch of film lists announced today are the first batch of films in this unit. In addition to the famous directors, the new Cannes actor Koji Yakusho, Oscar winners Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman, and Cannes and Venice double winner Isabelle Huppert all appeared on the screen, which can be described as star-studded. These works are:
Romanian film master Cristi Puiu's cold look at his motherland in "MMXX"; American famous director Todd Haynes teamed up with two Oscar-winning actresses in "May December"; German film master Wim Wenders's "A Perfect Day" won the Cannes Best Actor Award for Koji Yakusho; American film master Woody Allen's 50th feature film "A Lucky Thing"; British film master Ken Loach's last work "The Old Oak Tree Tavern"; Spanish legendary director Victor Erice's latest feature film "Closed Eyes" after a 30-year absence; Korean film master Hong Sang-soo and Isabelle Huppert's third collaboration "The Traveler's Needs".
MMXX (2023)
MMXX
Cristi Puiu
Highlights:
Romanian master looks at his motherland with cold eyes
A ridiculous psychological consultation, a health crisis that happened off-screen, a strange conversation about a gangster's sister-in-law, and a gradually revealed human trafficking conspiracy together constitute the COVID-19 quadrilateral painting by Romanian film master Cristi Puiu (No Doctor, Home on the Snowy Mountains). All four stories are developed from improvisational sketches created by actors' workshops. The dialogues are natural and realistic, but the topics and scenes involved are awkward and heavy. With Puiu's long-shot scheduling that emphasizes the real sense of time, it creates a ruthless and cold-eyed examination of Romanian society, which makes people question the cause and effect between the COVID-19 pandemic and social corruption.
May December (2023)
May December
Todd Haynes
Highlights:
Oscar-winning actresses work together to expose the essence of American popular culture bubble
An illicit love affair between two people with a 23-year age difference has once again attracted the interest of Hollywood more than 20 years after it happened; a method actress enters an atypical family and tries to spy on the secrets of the couple, but finds that the truth is far beyond her cognition. The new film directed by Todd Haynes (Carol) stars Oscar-winning actresses Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman. It is both a reflexive criticism of Hollywood methodology and a revelation of the hollow nature of American pop culture. The film was shortlisted for the main competition unit of the 76th Cannes Film Festival and was also nominated for the Best Original Screenplay at the 96th Academy Awards.
Perfect Day (2023)
Perfect Days
Wim Wenders
Highlights:
Cannes Film Festival winner Koji Yakusho's life-affirming work
©2023 MASTER MIND Ltd
Wim Wenders is very obsessed with Japan. He expressed his love for this film master and Japanese films in "Searching for Ozu". It is this love that made him create such a masterpiece that accurately interprets the core of Japanese culture. In "Perfect Days", Japanese national treasure actor Hiroshi Yakusho plays an ordinary toilet cleaner in Tokyo, Hirayama. The name Hirayama is also his tribute to Ozu. Faulkner's novels, tapes of underground bands, and shadows of trees captured by the camera during lunch breaks are all the comforts that Hirayama gets from his repetitive work every day. His cleaning car keeps moving forward. Along the way, he meets different people and also reveals his wounds from many years ago... Hiroshi Yakusho won the Best Actor Award at the 76th Cannes Film Festival for this film.
Lucky Hour (2023)
Coup de Chance
Woody Allen
Highlights:
Woody Allen's 50th feature film
The young wife meets an old poet classmate by chance, and a passionate love affair develops, which naturally triggers the jealous middle-aged husband's murderous intentions. But who knows whether fate will give this man it has always favored a heavy blow? Woody Allen's 50th feature film, with an all-French cast and all-French dialogue, is his first "foreign language film", but elements such as middle-class life, infidelity and revenge, Nietzschean philosophy, and agnosticism about fate are still a rehash of "Crimes and Mistakes", "Match Point" and "Irrational Man". Fortunately, the familiar ingredients such as charming pictures, intoxicating jazz music and lovely actors are enough to satisfy loyal diners. This film is an official screening of the 80th Venice Film Festival.
The Old Oak Tavern (2023)
The Old Oak
Ken Loach
Highlights:
Ken Loach's final film
As one of the greatest contemporary British film directors, Ken Loach has been focusing on telling human stories about social themes such as class and labor for more than 50 years, and has won the Cannes Palme d'Or twice with The Wind That Shakes the Barley and Daniel Blake. As Loach announced his retirement earlier, this latest masterpiece, The Old Oak Tavern, has become his farewell work. This film largely continues his long-term social concern, combining the struggle of the white working class in northeast England with the struggle of the Syrian refugees who were resettled in their town, and the historical photos of the miners' strike in the 1980s posted on the walls of the tavern inevitably remind people of Loach's 1984 documentary Whose Side Are You On?
Close Your Eyes (2023)
Close Your Eyes
Víctor Erice
Highlights:
Victor Erice returns to direct after 30 years of absence
In the 1990s, during the filming of a film, the leading actor suddenly disappeared mysteriously, and the film remained unfinished, shelved, and gradually forgotten. Twenty years later, Miguel, an old friend, director and writer, visited his daughter, old lover, and the editor he had worked with, and restarted a journey of search. This film is the first feature film of the legendary Spanish director Victor Erice in 30 years. It was selected for the premiere unit of the 2023 Cannes Film Festival and can be regarded as the most important work of this unit. This film embodies the director's retrospection, emotion and sigh for his fifty years of film life, and infinitely cherishes the lost time, memory, friendship, and the inspiration and miracles that movies once brought.
Traveler Demand (2024)
A Traveler's Needs
Hong Sang-soo
Highlights:
Huppert and Hong Sang-soo work together again
Elise, a traveler from France, works as a French tutor in South Korea to earn her living. The language barrier makes the communication between her and her students feel dislocated. The "chronic disease" of East Asian culture that is not good at thinking and expressing inner feelings is intertwined with the desire for communication and an open mind, triggering the special loneliness and melancholy that only foreign travelers can feel. Hong Sang-soo, known as the first director of Korean auteur films, collaborated with French national treasure actress Isabelle Huppert again after "In a Foreign Country" and "Claire's Camera", using minimalist shooting techniques to present the subtle interactions of interpersonal relationships, and won the Silver Bear Award of the Jury at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival in 2024.
Welcome to continue to follow us and get the latest information about the 26th Shanghai International Film Festival in 2024. Tickets for this year's film festival will go on sale on Tao Piaopiao at 12 noon on June 7.
Note: If the film list changes, please refer to the actual schedule.
