Chinese films loom large at UK festival

Film poster for Peter Chan's "Dearest." [Photo/Agencies]

Two Chinese films are expected to be top draws at this year's British Film Institute London Film Festival, which kicked off on Wednesday night Beijing time.

Directed by Peter Ho-Sun Chan, Dearest is a film about child abduction and has been selected for the official competition section, while Jacob Cheung's wuxia (martial arts) epic The White Haired Witch of Lunar Kingdom will have its international premiere and headline the festival's cult strand.

The two films join seven other Chinese films that are part of the 12-day festival's 248-strong lineup of movies from across the world. It also highlights Electric Shadows, a yearlong program by the BFI to encourage creative and business exchanges between China and the United Kingdom.

Featuring a high-profile star cast that includes Huang Bo, Zhao Wei, Tong Dawei and Hao Lei, and written by Zhang Ji, Dearest is the follow up to Sun's highly successful American Dreams in China, but this time he projects the country's darker social realities.

The powerful drama is based on true stories of child abduction in China and follows the ordeal of a Chinese couple whose young child is kidnapped. With an unexpected twist halfway through the film, Dearest tackles relationships and human emotion as much as societal issues about class, contemporary values and city versus rural life.

The movie is up for the Best Film Award that celebrates inventive and inspiring filmmaking, and will compete with 11 other films from countries such as the UK, Australia and France - plus Russia's Leviathan, Andrey Zvyagintsev's drama that picked up a best screenplay award at Cannes earlier this year.

The festival features nine program sections built on themes such as love, laughter, family, debate ("riveting films" that "argue and surprise"), dare ("films that take you out of your comfort zone) and the music-inspired sonic strand.

Headlining this year's cult strand with a red carpet gala is The White Haired Witch of Lunar Kingdom, Cheung's Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) saga featuring such household names as Fan Bingbing as the mystical sorceress Jade Raksha. While Chinese audiences might be familiar with the film and novel-adapted wuxia legacy, to British viewers, the "cult" title status could suggest a relatively new genre of Chinese cinema.