Opening gala of the 22nd Shanghai International Film Festival Photo: Yang Hui/GT

The long-awaited 23rd Shanghai International Film Festival (SIFF) will kick off on July 25 and run until August 2, SIFF announced on Friday. The 26th Shanghai TV Festival will be held between August 3 and 7. The events, which were postponed due to COVID-19, will be the first major international film and television festivals to be held in China since the outbreak began.

However, it is still undecided whether the audiences will be able to attend the opening ceremony and star-studded red carpet this year. The events will involve both offline and online activities, including screenings in cinemas, outdoor spaces and on online platforms, themed forums and TV awards, as well as promotional and investment activities.

SIFF's screening schedule will be released on Saturday, according to the announcement. Audiences will be able to buy tickets on Chinese ticket platform Taopiaopiao from July 20. There will be no offline ticket sales this year.

Audience attendance rates per screening will not exceed 30 percent, according to the SIFF announcement.

The good news came after the China Film Administration announced on Thursday that cinemas in low-risk areas across the country could reopen as early as July 20, having been closed for nearly six months.

Real-time searches for "cinema" on Chinese search engine Baidu surged 1,011 percent within an hour of the announcement. 

Despite strict virus control requirements, the reopening of cinemas and the return of SIFF have cheered Chinese movie lovers. Many expect new movies will be released in cinemas, and many have posted their expected movie lists online, ranging from domestically made movies to overseas works like Zhong Guo Nv Pai or the Iron Hammer, Detective China Town, Master Jiang and The Six Kingdoms, Interstellar, Train to Busan, Black Widow and Mulan.

Mulan, the mega-budget Disney live action film starring Chinese actress Liu Yifei, is popular on such lists. The film's release has been delayed twice because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"My happiness is back! Get prepared with masks, I am coming, Mulan," one netizen said.

However, some still worry that audiences will need to wait longer to watch movies that are over two hours long, as authorities will require each screening to not exceed two hours to prevent coronavirus transmission.

Daily screening schedules need to be reduced to half their normal number, the total number of viewers in each screening will be limited to 30 percent of the venue's capacity, and groups need to sit one meter apart from each other.

He Yue, a film enthusiast living in Shanghai, hopes there will be more screening sessions arranged during the festival to satisfy the demand of movie-goers who have been stuck at home for so long, considering the above limitations.

He told the Global Times that tickets during the SIFF sell like hot cakes every year. "They are sold out in seconds," He said, predicting that it may be even harder this year to get tickets due to the strict virus control measures.

Due to the threat of the coronavirus, many film events this year like the renowned 73rd Cannes International Film Festival and the Telluride Film Festival have been postponed or canceled.

"The cinemas are opening and the film festival is returning, everything is getting better," a netizen commented.