The 24th Shanghai International Film Festival (SIFF) announced its first batch of official selection film titles today. Malaysian Director Tan Chui Mui’s feature film, Barbarian Invasion has been selected into competition for the Golden Goblet Award.

SIFF is the only A-category international film festival in China. This year, the festival’s theme “The Film Art of Centennial Glory on a Ceaseless Journey”, continues to converge, present and support fine film works at home and abroad with a more open attitude.

The 24th SIFF has received 4,443 films from 113 countries and regions around the world.

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As the highest prize in SIFF, Golden Goblet Award will be judged by the jury panels made up of professionals in the world film industry. The juries for this year’s main competition category are Huang Jianxin, Anthony Chen, Deng Chao, Song Jia, Marco Müller, Natacha Devillers, and Song Jia. Other selected film titles for this category include Amateurs, The Chanting Willows, Manchurian Tiger, and so on.

Barbarian Invasion is an arthouse action film. This is the third feature film directed by Tan Chui Mui after a decade. Apart from being the director and writer, she also challenged herself
to play the main lead.

This film gathered notable local film practitioners, including Woo Ming Jin and Bianca Balbuena (Philippines) as producer, Pete Teo, Bront Palarae, James Lee, and Zhiny Ooi as the main cast.

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SIFF will be the world premiere of Barbarian Invasion. It will be screened in cinemas on June 13. Unfortunately, the production team cannot travel and meet with the audiences in Shanghai as entry into China is very strict due to the pandemic.

Tan Chui Mui said, “There will be many old friends attending the SIFF. I felt like a mischievous kid, I have put a frog in a box, now just anxiously waiting, anticipating, trying to imagine their faces when they open the box…”

“As a filmmaker and an artist, it gives me a great sense of pride to participate in this project. Playing my role was a new and fun experience. Just as Barbarian Invasion was filled with new experiences for me, if viewers go to the theatre without any prior knowledge and simply watch the film, it will be a nice experience for them as well,” said Bront Palarae, who acts as a technology geek in the film.

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Pete Teo, who plays a director’s role in the film said, “Mui and I go back a long way and I was excited to work with her again. With Bront’s participation, this is one of the very rare local productions that involve talents from both the Chinese language and Malay language scenes. It sets a great example for the future of Malaysian cinema.”

In response to when it will be released in Malaysia, Da Huang Pictures producer Jing Xuan said, it remains to be seen as they continue to observe the situation evolve with the pandemic.

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Barbarian Invasion is one of the films under a new initiative established by China’s Heaven Pictures and Hong Kong International Film Festival Society (HKIFFS), entitled “Back to Basic (B2B): A Love Supreme”. This initiative invites six notable Asian filmmakers to direct feature films under a limited budget.

SIFF is scheduled to take place from June 11 to June 19, 2021. All selected films will be screened in a cinema, for more info click here.

All images in this feature were supplied by Da Huang Pictures. 

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