The 26th Shanghai International Film Festival's Mini Film Unit today announced a list of 50 outstanding candidate works, covering a variety of genres, including 24 feature films, 13 animation works, and 13 other types of works such as documentaries and experimental works.

This year's Mini Film Unit received more than 1,300 entries from more than 70 countries and regions, showing a younger, richer, more diverse and more exploratory creative style. After all the entries were selected by professional and experienced film selectors, 50 excellent candidate works were released. Among the 50 candidate works, there are 39 local masterpieces that demonstrate the new power of Chinese images, and 11 excellent overseas works from France, Indonesia, the United Kingdom, Belgium and other countries, showing the exchange and mutual learning of diverse cultures.

The dream road to SIFF is still going on, and it is worth looking forward to which of the 20 selected works in this year's mini film unit will win. At present, the mentor team composed of well-known photographer and director of photography Zhao Xiaoding, British screenwriter and director Luo Fei, young director Wu Lang, animation director Wang Maomao, and screenwriter Jia Jiawei has started the "50 to 20" review and nominated their own single honorary works. They will uphold the core concept of encouraging originality, and conduct a comprehensive evaluation of the completion and innovation of the works around multiple dimensions such as image narrative, audio-visual language, artistic aesthetics, and production technology, which not only encourages innovative exploration, but also foresees future growth space.

This year's mini film unit series of activities will be held from June 20 to 22, including honors, mentor forums, exploration classes, screening salons and other activities. This year marks the fifth anniversary of the establishment of this unit, and a special joint exhibition of outstanding works from previous years is planned, which is also a review and inspection of the growth of this unit in recent years. In addition, the Communication University of China is specially invited to bring outstanding student works to this unit for a tour exchange to jointly promote the growth of newcomers.

We sincerely thank the exclusive educational support unit of this unit, Shanghai Vancouver Film School, the official friendly partner Bilibili Movie Channel, and the School of Drama, Film and Television of Communication University of China for their strong support for the relevant activities of this unit. The 50 excellent candidate works will be screened online on Bilibili Movie Channel with the authorization of the creators and in compliance with the platform's broadcast standards, so that more outstanding young creators can be seen.

See the future in five minutes, and the journey of exploration will be more exciting. In June this year, in Shanghai, I look forward to meeting you who have never given up your dreams!

The Shanghai International Film Festival Mini Film Unit (formerly the Short Video Unit) was established in 2019. It is an important measure to improve the cultivation of new talents and create a ladder-type new talent incubation system. This unit aims to use ultra-short video works of less than 5 minutes (including 5 minutes) as a carrier, through solicitation, promotion, tracking, training and other forms, to establish a long-term mechanism of "discovering new talents and excavating new works", encourage young creative image talents to bravely explore and create boldly, and pave the first step for them to climb to feature films. At the same time, take advantage of the platform, give play to the platform effect, integrate social resources, promote talent reserves, and cultivate and deliver cutting-edge talents for the future development of the film industry.