Chinese cinema to add fire to Sydney Film Festival(2)

With more than 20,000 students their ritual exercises resemble a scene from a Chinese historical epic. Director and cinematographer Inigo Westmeier captures the early-morning routine in cinematic richness, before focusing on three pupils: nine year- old Xin Chenxi, and two teens, Chen Xi and Huang Luolan.

Selected for Sundance's International Documentary Competition, Fallen City, by Chinese Director Zhao Qi, had its world premiere at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam and tells the interwoven stories of three survivors from the town of China's deadliest earthquake in three decades on May 12, 2008.

The only local entry in the running for the Australia's richest film award is The Rocket, a story about a young boy living in Laos which last month won the grand jury prize at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Also up for the 60,000 Australian dollars (about 61,000 U.S. dollars)prize is acclaimed Romanian production Child's Pose, Stories We Tell by Canadian filmmaker Sarah Polley and Only God Forgives, a French-Danish collaboration starring Ryan Gosling.

"Having keenly attended the SFF for many years, always with the eyes of a somewhat excited and hungry child, it will be a great pleasure and honour for me to take up the position of jury president," Weaving said.

Every year, 12 feature films are selected for the Sydney Film Festival Official Competition on the basis that they demonstrate " emotional power and resonance; are audacious, cutting-edge, courageous; and go beyond the usual treatment of the subject matter."

The 12 films for 2013 are: The Act of Killing, Borgman, The Broken Circle Breakdown, Child's Pose, For Those in Peril, Grigris, Monsoon Shootout, Oh Boy, Only God Forgives, The Rocket, Stories We Tell and Wadjda.

The Sydney Film Festival runs from June 5 to 16 and will include 19 world premieres.