Toronto, August 5 (China News Service) -- The 25th Canadian Fantasia International Film Festival kicked off on August 5. A number of Chinese films from Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, Taiwan and other places will be featured in this year's festival.
The annual Fantasy International Film Festival is headquartered in Montreal. It is considered by the industry to be the largest genre film festival event in North America. Due to the pandemic, the festival's events last year were all held on the online platform. At present, many places in Canada have gradually lifted the epidemic prevention restrictions, and this year's three-week film festival activities were held in cinemas and online platforms.
This year, six feature films from Hong Kong will be screened at the festival. Seven Hong Kong filmmakers, including Du Qifeng, Xu Ke, Hong Jinbao and Hui Anhua, and "The Band of Seven", directed by the late director Chen Musheng and starring Donnie Yen and Nicholas Tse, will be screened offline in Montreal. Zhao Shanheng's "One Second Boxing King", Gao Zibin's "Kill a Dusk", Chen Jianlang's "Hand Cigarette" and Lu Jungu's "Cloth God" four films were screened online.
The audience can also see "Calm Wind and Waves" directed by Chinese mainland director Li Xiaofeng, and "Hey! "Divine Beast", Jia Youting's thriller "Crying Sorrows", Singaporean director Tan Mei Tim's comedy film "Zhongbalu Club" and other different types of works. In addition, many short films such as Chinese director Zhang Nan's "Water Bird" and Zhou Shengwei's "Let's Fall in Love" also participated in the film festival.
In a video message to the festival, The Director of the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in Toronto, Ms. Wu, said that the HKSAR Government has always been very supportive of the development of the film industry, funding low- and medium-budget film production, supporting new filmmakers, promoting the participation of the film industry in international film festivals, and launching training programmes to cultivate backwards. Many Hong Kong films funded by the government have been successfully participated in various international film festivals in Canada, which is a matter of pride.
In addition to film screenings, the festival will also host a series of workshops and other events. According to the festival organizing committee, during last year's film festival, the virtual event successfully attracted 85,000 online audiences, and a quarter of the 104 feature films that participated in the screening ushered in the world premiere, and most of the films achieved sales in terms of distribution. (End)
Source: China News Network