Photo: siff.com

The 23rd Shanghai International Film Festival (SIFF), which will be held from July 25 to August 2 has attracted more international attention this year, in another sign the coronavirus is truly waning in China, Fu Wenxia, managing director of the SIFF center told the Global Times on Monday.

A total of 3,693 movies from 108 countries and regions had applied to join the screening during this year's SIFF, Fu said. More than 320 have been selected and will be screened in 29 designated cinemas in Shanghai. The SIFF's official website shows motion pictures from Japan, the US, Canada, German, Italy, France, Indonesia and India have been selected.

The 4K version of Eight and a Half and The Sweet Life by Federico Fellini, Japanese movies Paprika and The Confidenceman JP Episode of the Princess, the Harry Porter series are among hot sale SIFF movies, according to a document that Alibaba Pictures sent to the Global Times.

Fu also revealed the festival's "master class" will be attended by more renowned international filmmakers, including Hirokazu Koreeda, Lavrente Indico Diaz, Naomi Kawase and Dennis Villeneuve, who will share their stories and experiences via online channels.

More than 300 international exhibitors will join the International Film and TV Online Market held during the SIFF, 100 more than last year.

Fu hopes the SIFF can warm up the global film industry which had been hit hard by the coronavirus. "Holding of SIFF reflects the vitality of the film industry in Shanghai and China and will bring more confidence to the industry globally," she said. The SIFF is one of the beneficiaries of China's efforts in epidemic control.

Regrettably, there will be neither rating nor award ceremonies for this year's "Golden Goblet" Awards and Asian New Talent Awards. The SIFF will only release the "official selected films," the SIFF organizer announced at a press conference Monday. The grand opening ceremony and star-stubbed red carpet have also been cancelled to prevent COVID-19 transmission.

However, people's enthusiasm for the SIFF has not been deterred by the delay or the coronavirus. Over 120,000 tickets were sold in the first 30 minutes of their release on Monday on the Chinese ticket platform Taopiaopiao, the designated ticketing platform of SIFF, according to Alibaba Pictures, and nearly 130,000 tickets, all for this year's SIFF, were basically sold out within one hour.

Yu Lulu, vice president of Alibaba Pictures revealed that the SIFF would possibly add more screenings of hot movies depending on the sales of tickets.

To get the tickets, 28-year-old Cui Fang and two of his friends even made an alliance helping each other to buy the tickets. Cui finally harvested tickets for 11 movies screened during the festival. "It is good enough for me, movie tickets during SIFF enjoyed good sales every year," Cui told the Global Times.

"60 percent of my love for Shanghai comes from SIFF, and I hope it will finally return to normal in the future to present more works," Cui added.

77-year-old movie fan Fang Tingrong used to wait all night at the designated ticketing windows every year for tickets. He told the Global Times that he had attended all the previous 22 SIFFs since the event started in 1993, and this year he won't miss it either.

"I started to follow the updates as long as I knew that the tickets will be only sold online this year. I only felt assured after I finally harvested some," he said.