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Poster of documentary "The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru". Photo: Screenshot from website

 
The 26th Shanghai International Film Festival (SIFF) is set to commence on Friday with the premiere of much-anticipated documentary The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru. Over the course of ten days, a total of 461 films will be screened across 47 cinemas in the city, with more than 1,600 screenings planned, according to the committee.

Promotional material of the 26th Shanghai International Film Festival Photo: Snapshot of Sina Weibo

According to Chinese ticketing platforms, the top three fastest-selling films were The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru, Japanese animated film Detective Conan: The Million-Dollar Pentagram, and Chinese romance film A Man and a Woman. 

Within the first hour, 355,000 tickets were sold, and 80 percent of the buyers were between the ages of 18 and 34, highlighting youth as the main force in cinema attendance.

The Golden Goblet Award, the festival's main prize, is divided into five categories, including main competition, Asian new talent, animation, documentary, and short films, and four Chinese films have been nominated for the main competition.

The 26th SIFF will showcase a large number of films that have won awards at the Cannes, Berlin, and Venice Film Festivals in the past two years. In 2019, the festival officially added the "Cannes Express" section, and this year, the number of films featured in this section has reached an all-time high.

Sun Mengjin, a documentary selector for the Shanghai International Film Festival, as well as a seasoned film critic, said "the Cannes Film Festival concluded just about two weeks ago, and we can truly witness the latest trends in world cinema in this special screening section of the Shanghai International Film Festival." 

He added that 2023 and 2024 have seen a plethora of excellent films.

"One of the criteria for evaluating an international film festival's excellence is its sensitivity to recent developments in global cinema, including the number of films participating in competitions," Sun was quoted as saying by the Shanghai Observer.