Asian New Talent Award to bring Asian Film Talents to the World Stage

Asian New Talent Award is one of the most important awards to be handed out at the Shanghai International Film Festival.

Since its inception six years ago, the award has introduced a good number of Asian film talents to the world stage, such as Ning Hao from China, Hassan Yektapahna from Iran and Ravi Bharwani from Indonesia.

Entering the seventh session, what will this year's award focus on and what type of films and directors are more likely to win?

Reporter: The goal of Asian New Talent Award is to seek and promote talented young Asians to stimulate regional vitality in filmmaking; to encourage multi-cultural presentation in Asian content and creativity; and to promote a new generation of Asian films internationally.

With that goal in mind, an international jury that incldues Hur Jin-ho, Phil Agland, Shozo Ichiyama, Charlie Yeung and Pema Tseden will decide the winners for Best Film and Best Director this year.

In fact, Tseden put himself on the map by winning this very award last year.

"Asian new Talent Award is different from Golden Goblet Award. It actually offers money to the winners, and that can be a big help to those up-and-coming directors who are still struggling financially. Take myself as an example. Thanks to the money I got last year, I was able to finish the pre-production work on my second film. That really shows how helpful this award can be."

The winners for Best Film and Best Director will each get 150,000 yuan, or roughly 21,000 USD. So how does one get all that money? Japanese director Ichiyama says the answer is very simple: be innovative.

"For example, when I saw Jia Zhangke's first film Xiao Wu at the festival, I was really surprised. I never saw such a film before."

Korean director Jin-ho, who leads the panel this year, adds that the director's age is not part of the criteria.

"Just because someone is young, doesn't mean he is New Talent. How innovative is the director's work? How well is the film produced and executed? These are the two criteria on which we will base our decision. Everybody on the panel will try to be fair and balanced."

Yeung, who used to be a popular Cantopop singer, is the only female jury member this year. She says the director's gender is not part of the criteria either.

"I don't really pay attention if the director is male or female. I think the way we grew up and the life experiences we've had all contribute to our work. So regardless of the director's gender, I'm pretty sure the work reflects his or her thoughts and life experiences. It just so happens that some may be more commercial than the others."

The ten films in competition this year are Crossing the Mountain and Lan from China; Cast Me if You Can and Time Traveler from Japan; Goodbye Mom and The Executioner from Korea; Red Dragonflies from Singapore; The Legend is Alive from Vietnam; The Pawnshop from the Philippines, as well as a Singapore-Malaysia co-production, The Blue Mansion.

The winners will be announced two days before the film festival concludes.

For CRI, I'm Liu Yan in Shanghai.