The leaders of three of the world’s most influential film festivals told Shanghai on Sunday that the role of the festival circuit in discovering and developing new voices has never been more critical – and that personal connection, not data, remains the truest compass for identifying talent.

Tricia Tuttle, director of the Berlin Film Festival, opened the main forum session of the 28th Shanghai International Film Festival by arguing that “discovery and connection” are the twin pillars that justify the festival’s existence in an age of algorithms and online networks. Tuttle pointed to Berlinale’s annual talent program, which draws applications from more than 100 countries and brings 200 emerging directors, screenwriters, cinematographers, editors, composers and critics to Berlin each year, as proof that the structured cultivation of careers remains irreplaceable. “A first-time filmmaker brings a little-known work to Berlin, Toronto or Shanghai, and within a week they are meeting distributors, sales agents, producers and future collaborators,” she said. “That is what discovery and connection mean.”

Cameron Bailey, CEO of the Toronto Film Festival, grounded the discussion in commercial reality, noting that TIFF has served as the launchpad for films ranging from “The Shawshank Redemption” to “The Martian” – the latter generating roughly $600 million globally after its Toronto bow. He recounted how a young British filmmaker arrived at TIFF in 1998 with a low-budget black-and-white debut that attracted considerable attention from audiences, press and industry. That filmmaker was Christopher Nolan with “Following.”

Bailey talked up TIFF launching a dedicated market – the Toronto International Film Festival Market – running Sept. 10-16 alongside the main festival, with more than 9,000 square meters of exhibition space, 120 exhibitors and roughly 6,000 industry delegates. The market will focus on film, television, new media deals, scripts and series, with a dedicated section for emerging technology including artificial intelligence.

Producer Janet Yang, former president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, offered a cross-cultural perspective, recalling her early work introducing the films of Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou to North American audiences in the 1980s when they were still emerging voices. “We can’t just look at surface markers of success,” Yang said. “We need to ask: What unique life experience does this creator bring? What singular perspective? What specific story do they urgently need to tell?” She described a short-film initiative she co-founded six years ago with the Asia Pacific Screen Alliance that provides funding and industry access specifically to Asian women filmmakers, one alumna of which went on to screen her debut feature at Sundance.

Albert Lee, executive director of the Hong Kong International Film Festival, traced HKIFF’s history as a bridge between Chinese-language and international cinema – noting that Chen Kaige’s “Yellow Earth” had its international premiere at the festival’s ninth edition in 1985. As HKIFF marked its 50th anniversary this year under the theme “Beyond Fifty – Envisioning the Future,” Lee described a long-term relationship with filmmakers such as Jia Zhangke, whose short “Xiao Shan Going Home” first attracted attention in Hong Kong in 1996 before a decades-long exhibition partnership extending through to his most recent work “Caught by the Tides.” Lee highlighted HKIFF’s Fire Bird Awards competition – which carries Oscar qualifying status for short and documentary categories – and outlined partnerships with production companies including Suoshou Juying and Supermedia Group to support new feature and short projects from across Asia.

Shanghai International Film Festival Center director Chen Guo used her address to announce a series of upgrades to the festival’s talent infrastructure. The SIFF ING Youth Talent Initiative is introducing a new mobile-phone filmmaking workshop for the first time this year; the SIFF NEXT pitching program is opening its industry workshops to general public participants alongside professionals; and the SIFF YOUNG Shanghai Young Filmmaker Support Plan is marking its fifth anniversary with a new focus on commercial producing talent. Chen also noted that 41 of the 49 films across SIFF’s five Golden Goblet Award competition sections this year are world premieres – an 84% world premiere rate – with the main competition and documentary sections achieving 100% world premieres for the first time.

Wen Muye, the director of “Dying to Survive,” serves as chair of the SIFF YOUNG selection panel this year and announced the nine filmmakers chosen from 59 eligible candidates: five directors, three producers and one screenwriter. Director Bai Xue and writer Zhou Yunhai were among those named. Wen, reflecting on his own career, described the creative process as an antidote to isolation. “We all tend to fall into a state of loneliness when making art,” he said. “Working together – director with screenwriter, director with producer – is also a way of dissolving that loneliness. SIFF and SIFF YOUNG are places that provide companions.”

A subsequent panel discussion – bringing together Wang Jun, chair of Shanghai Film Group; Li Jie, chief executive of Damai Entertainment; producer Chen Zhixi; Wen; and director-writer Dong Runian – circled repeatedly around the limits of formula. Li, whose company backed “Dear You” – one of the breakout hits of 2026 – said the film’s success traced back to a relationship built with director Lan Hongchun over multiple modestly budgeted Chaoshan dialect films, the earliest of which grossed around 40 million yuan. “The moment you try to replicate something, the possibility is already diminishing,” Li said. “Audiences are always ahead of us.”

Dong, who cut his teeth as a screenwriter before directing and credited collaborations with directors Guan Hu and Ning Hao for deepening his craft, argued that storytelling competence is the one skill young filmmakers cannot outsource. “Over the last decade, screenwriting ability has declined globally,” he said. “Any film that manages to tell its story with clarity and emotional precision tends to win audiences.”

Chen Zhixi, who has produced films with directors including Da Peng and Chen Sicheng, told younger filmmakers that sincerity and persistence – not trend-chasing – were the qualities that had distinguished the generation she worked with in the early 2010s. She announced that Wanda Cinemas will in June unveil a new initiative allowing emerging directors to access screen time through the chain’s “Pinhaopian” crowdfunding exhibition mechanism, reserving 10% of annual showtimes for independent and youth-driven works.

Wang Jun previewed that Shanghai Film Group’s Kunpeng Plan – unveiled in November 2024 as the second phase of the company’s new-talent initiative – currently has four projects in development, including animator Li Wenyu’s “A Story About Fire,” a stop-motion feature rooted in Sichuan folk aesthetics that has been in production for three years.