Shanghai Film Festival: China’s Growing Animation Sector Takes Center Stage

Boonie Bears: Guardian Code FANTAWILD ANIMATION

The spotlight will be shining both on what’s happening in Chinese animation right now and on what is about to emerge from the genre as the 25th Shanghai International Film Festival, which opened Friday, plays out until June 18.

The festival’s main Golden Goblet Awards have lined up five films from five countries for its Animation Film section, and they include the hotly anticipated Master Zhong from Chinese streamer iQiYi. The film takes its place in the competition alongside the Iran-Turkey co-production Dolphin Boy (directed by Mohammad Kheirandish), Hungary’s Four Souls Of Coyote (Aron Gauder), Gonta: The Story Of The Two-Named Dog In The Fukushima Disaster (Akio Nishizawa) from Japan and the Belgium-France-Spain effort The Inseparables (Jérémie Degruson).

Master Zhong taps into a much-loved character from archives of Chinese mythology but gives the demon-slaying titular hero a YA-savvy contemporary twist by pairing him with a young woman taking matters – and her fate – into her own hands. First, she searches the underworld for clues about her father’s death, and then she decides to become a demon slayer in her own right. The streamer has tapped the talents of two young directors – Wang Yuxi and Huang Shanchuan – from the acclaimed Beijing Film Academy’s animation school as it looks to up its output from the genre.

Similar “YA” themes in Chinese animation were seen in numbers when the country’s animation studios made their post-pandemic return to Cannes in May – their first major presence at an international festival since 2019. They will be out in force again at the SIFF Market, which runs concurrently with the festival proper as they look to build on impressive recent box office returns for the genre.

Boonie Bears: The Guardian Code was the ninth installment of the wildly popular franchise that follows the high jinx that the lovable bears Briar and Bramble get up to as they try to save their forest home. It collected an estimated $136 million (RMB 924 million) during its Lunar New Year run, placing the film an impressive third overall during one of the peak stretches for film-going in China.

The word in Cannes was that Chinese animation studios were looking to expand the landscape of content and that looks to be the case with the next big production set for a domestic release.

Expectation in China has been building around the latest effort from the Beijing-based Light Chaser Animation studio, Chang’an San Wan Li (30,000 miles from Chang’an), which is set for a July 8 domestic release but also has its producers looking to capture an international audience.

Chinese animation fansites have been buzzing about the film and, again, the creators have tapped into Chinese history for the foundations of the story. But Light Chaser Animation co-founder Yu Zhou was quick to add to the hype by saying fans could expect a different take on history – with poets, of all people, as the heroes.

“Chang’an is an epic animation feature film that is different from any previous animation films Light Chaser or other animation studios have produced,” he said. “It tells the real stories of the poets of the prime time of Tang dynasty, about 1300 years ago. These poets’ names are household known, their poems are in textbooks, but their stories are much less known and have never been told in such an epic way.”