07/06/2016 - The only Chinese A-list festival, taking place from 11-19 June, will hold the world premieres of some eagerly anticipated European films

Salt and Fire by Werner Herzog

The Shanghai International Film Festival (SIFF), one of the largest film festivals in East Asia, will be held from 11-19 June. Seven European films and co-productions are among the 14 features selected to compete for the festival’s top award, the Golden Goblet, including several movies that will have their world premiere: Danish actor Ulrich Thomsen’s directorial debut, In Embryo, German director Ed Ehrenberg’s Hear the Silence [+see also:
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film profile], the Polish film Forest, 4 am [+see also:
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film profile] by Jan Jakub Kolski, and Werner Herzog’s eagerly anticipated romantic thriller Salt and Fire [+see also:
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film profile], set during a natural disaster, featuring Michael Shannon, Gael García Bernal and Veronica Ferres. Other European films in competition are Hanna’s Sleeping Dogs [+see also:
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film profile] by Austrian director Andreas Gruber, Italian filmmaker Vito Palmieri’s See You in Texas [+see also:
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film profile], which is having its premiere at the Biografilm Festival in Bologna, and the Finnish film Flowers of Evil [+see also:
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film profile], directed by Antti Jokinen, whose The Midwife [+see also:
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film profile] was also selected at SIFF last year. The competition line-up is completed by Chinese films Cock and Bull by Cao Baoping, De Lan by Liu Jie, Soul on a String by Zhang Yang, the Japanese film The Projects by Junji Sakamoto, the Iranian title Sound and Fury by Houman Seyedi, the Filipino movie Haze by Ralston Jover and the US film Mr. Church by Bruce Beresford.

In the documentary section, Swedish-Kurdish director Hogir Hirori’s The Girl Who Saved My Life [+see also:
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film profile] and two other European co-productions, Mr. Gaga [+see also:
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film profile] by Israeli director Tomer Heymann and We Are X [+see also:
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film profile] by Stephen Kijak, are among the five films in competition. As for the animation section, the Czech film Pat and Mat [+see also:
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film profile] by Marek Beneš, April and the Extraordinary World [+see also:
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interview: Christian Desmares and Fran…
film profile], co-directed by French filmmakers Chirstian Desmares and Franck Ekinci, and the German-Swedish-Swiss collaboration Ted Sieger’s Molly Monster [+see also:
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film profile], directed by Ted Sieger, Michael Ekbladh and Matthias Bruhn, are competing with two other films from China and Japan, respectively.

The many sections under the International Panorama provide the audience with a great opportunity to explore more of European cinema. This year, under the spotlight of the “Tribute to the Masters” section we find Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky and Italian director and screenwriter Luchino Visconti. One section of the festival is dedicated to movies that have won awards or been in competition at Cannes, Venice and Berlin, or which have garnered nominations elsewhere: Hungarian director László Nemes’ Son of Saul [+see also:
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Q&A: László Nemes
interview: László Rajk
film profile], winner of the Grand Prix at the 68^th Cannes Film Festival and Best Foreign-language Film at the 88^th Academy Awards; Alexander Sokurov’s Francofonia [+see also:
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film profile], which was in the running for the Golden Lion at the 72^nd Venice Film Festival; and The Lobster [+see also:
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Q&A: Yorgos Lanthimos
film profile] by Yorgos Lanthimos, which was competing for the Palme d’Or at the 68^th Cannes Film Festival, among others. There is also a section especially dedicated to German films, with a line-up including multi-disciplinary artist AKIZ’s psycho-thriller Der Nachtmahr [+see also:
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film profile], Sebastian Schipper’s Victoria [+see also:
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interview: Sebastian Schipper
film profile], which was in competition at the Berlin Film Festival in 2015, Gerd Schneider’s feature debut The Culpable [+see also:
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film profile], Windstorm 2 [+see also:
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making of
film profile], a sequel to the moving children's movie directed by Katja von Garnier that was in the Panorama at a previous edition of the SIFF, and several others. Finally, Italian master Federico Fellini’s comedy-drama Amarcord will also be screened at the SIFF, in the “4K Renovated Films” sidebar.