The 28th Shanghai International Film Festival closed June 21 with its clearest statement yet on what the industry values most: new voices, deep pipelines, and an embrace of artificial intelligence that it insists will complement rather than displace the humans making films. Whether the industry believes that last part is another matter.

Debut Directors Had the Night — in Both Directions

When Zhong Kaifeng’s “Atlantic Rhapsody” claimed best feature film at the Golden Goblet Awards, it completed a sweep that no one had mapped in advance but felt, in retrospect, inevitable. The film – a loose, time-skipping portrait of a young man searching for his father against the freewheeling capitalist churn of late-1990s Northeast China – also won best cinematography for Hao Jiayue, whose previous work includes “A Song Sung Blue.” It is Zhong’s debut feature.”

The Asian New Talent section told the same story. Gong Yiwen’s “Her First Taste,” a campus-set identity film developed with support from the SIFF Project over the past three years, won both best film and best actress for lead Ma Fufu. Sompot Chidgasornpongse’s “9 Temples to Heaven” – the Thai director’s Cannes Directors’ Fortnight title – was a double winner in the section. Apart from the best screenplay prize, which went to “Hunter’s Moon,” every Asian New Talent award went to a debut feature.

That the two competition sections arrived at the same conclusion independently is less a coincidence than a signal. The jury, led by Tony Leung Chiu-wai in his first outing as a Golden Goblet competition president, was clearly reading the room – an industry thirsty for fresh creative energy in a market that has been dominated by established names.

The Pipeline Is the Point

Shanghai’s investment in new talent extends well beyond the competition program, and the 28th edition made that infrastructure more visible than any previous year. The festival’s Three-Pillar system – SIFF Project for project incubation, SIFF ING for emerging filmmakers, and SIFF YOUNG for industry-facing talent development – now operates as a structured ladder from idea to international exposure.

SIFF YOUNG unveiled its class of 2026, nine filmmakers selected from 59 applicants spanning directing, producing and screenwriting. Nominations came from established names including Jia Zhangke and Jojo Hui; the final-round jury was chaired by Wen Muye, himself a SIFF YOUNG alumnus from 2023. “The young creators we have selected boast outstanding talent and diverse styles,” Wen said. “They combine solid professionalism with independent thinking.”

Meanwhile, SIFF ING’s new Mobile Filmmaking Camp concluded with 10 short films shot entirely on iPhone by emerging Chinese directors, screened both on-site in Shanghai and online. The camp provided each participant with professional iPhone filmmaking equipment, production funding and technical mentorship across the full production cycle. It is the kind of initiative – small in scale, deliberate in design – that distinguishes SIFF from festivals that treat talent development as a press release rather than a program.

AI Is Everywhere, and the Jobs Question Won’t Go Away

Shanghai embedded AI more deeply into its main program than any previous SIFF edition – running dedicated workshops spanning image creation, audio tuning, AI writing and legal tutoring, and partnering with generative AI company MiniMax as an institutional collaborator. AI film showcases and AI-welcoming studio launches ran throughout the festival’s 10 days.

At the SIFForum panel on “Smart Tech, Immersive Worlds, The Next Film Revolution,” speakers identified three core challenges: computing power, distribution and the ability to direct generative video AI with precision. Yan Yijun, VP of AI foundational model builder MiniMax, called compute the “absolute core” of the problem. “For a generative video model to achieve greater fidelity, what you really need is greater computing power to repeatedly refine and experiment,” Yan said. “The more you experiment, the better to train certain aspects more effectively.”

The pace of change on the ground is already striking. One AI-first company that spoke with Variety at the festival disclosed that it had completed shooting a 120-minute live-action period epic in seven days, using AI background replacements, relighting and VFX work, with crew members standing in for performances that were later replaced by AI-generated actors. Panellists at AI forums throughout the festival repeatedly insisted that generative AI would be complementary to human creativity rather than a substitute for it. The anxiety in the room suggested the industry is not yet convinced.

China Wants the World — but the Red Tape Is Real

Unlike many festivals in China, which can be inward-looking in programming and industry focus, SIFF leans hard into its international standing. The 2026 edition drew more than 420 films selected from around 4,100 submissions across 125 countries, with managing director Chen Guo describing selection as guided by “the values reflected in each work and its premiere status,” alongside considerations of geographic representation and diversity of filmmakers by gender and generation.

The Belt and Road Film Festival Alliance, which the festival established in 2018, now counts 55 members from 48 countries. Chen described the initiative as transforming “cultural showcases into in-depth, long-term industrial cooperation.” A dedicated Egyptian Film Week marked the 70th anniversary of China-Egypt diplomatic relations.

But the SIFForum’s co-production panel delivered a franker assessment of the barriers to that cooperation. Yan Peng, deputy general manager of state-owned Huaxia Film Distribution, pointed to significant regulatory and copyright inconsistencies affecting Chinese producers working abroad – differences in approval qualifications, actor ratios, investment proportions and content censorship across regions. “From copyright to derivative IP rights, issues of inconsistency often exist,” Yan said. “Distribution cycles and currency settlements across theatrical, streaming, and TV ends also differ, which leads to cumbersome cross-border accounting.” Ambition and friction, it turns out, travel together.

The Festival Knows What It Is — and It Executes

The opening ceremony at the Grand Theatre drew a constellation of Chinese-language stars and set an unmistakable tone. The standout moment came not from Leung’s appearance as jury president, but from Lisa Lu – the “Crazy Rich Asians” actor who has already passed her 100th birthday by the Chinese calendar – receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award. “Shanghai is my hometown, and it is also where my artistic journey began,” Lu said from the stage. “Looking at so many outstanding filmmakers present here today, if there is an opportunity in the future, please get in touch with me. I have not retired. I will continue to act.”

That the ceremony opened with a performer hoisted on a robotic arm interacting with AI-generated projections, yet centered its emotional core on a centenarian actor declaring she was still available for work, was not incidental. It was SIFF’s thesis statement: a festival threading the needle between the technological and the irreducibly human. Translators at virtually every press conference, press pool photography accessible without a Chinese phone number, and rapid event transcripts – small things, but they reflect a festival that understands what international credibility requires. SIFF remains the only FIAPF-accredited competitive A-list feature film festival in China, and it produces an opening gala on the level of a major televised awards ceremony. That execution is not an accident.