China Returns to Cannes in a Big Way

After a partial comeback in 2023, Chinese cinema is returning to this year’s 77th Cannes Film Festival in a major way. While unveiling his 2024 lineup in April, festival chief Thierry Frémaux noted that “it’s been three or four years that China has been less present in world cinema,” but he emphasized that his team now can enjoy “the satisfaction of having China — a major cinema country — back in the selection.” 

China’s grueling passage through the pandemic, which kept the country’s borders closed until January 2023, was by far the biggest obstacle the Chinese film industry faced in participating in the West’s greatest celebrations of cinema. Beijing’s simultaneous tightening of regulatory oversight of the film sector during that period resulted in the production of fewer artistically adventurous films, as well as greater difficulty for Chinese distributors in getting permission to import and release Western movies of any category in the country. Some in the Chinese industry were also concerned that the Cannes Festival’s 2021 decision to give a surprise screening of the independent documentary Revolution of Our Times — a gripping chronicle of China’s brutal suppression of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protest movement — would make participation in future editions of the festival a politically risky prospect. 

But Chinese cinema began inching its way back toward Cannes last year, with the inclusion of indie titles like Singaporean filmmaker Anthony Chen’s Chinese drama The Breaking Ice and Wei Shujun’s Only the River Flows in the Un Certain Regard section, along with Geng Zihan’s A Song Sung Blue in Directors’ Fortnight (Chinese documentarian Wang Bing also had two films in the selection, although the director resides outside of China and his recent work is co-produced by European countries).

This year, there are five titles spread across the official selection, spanning art-house works, genre filmmaking, and a major commercial movie. Cannes favorite Jia Zhangke is back in the main competition with Caught by the Tides, “a very fluid narration,” in Frémaux’s words, composed of footage Jia shot across China over the past 25 years. Veteran Hong Kong director Peter Chan’s dramatic thriller She’s Got No Name, starring Zhang Ziyi and re-creating an infamous story from China’s nascent women’s rights movement, is expected to be one of China’s biggest blockbusters of the summer and is getting an out-of-competition premiere in Cannes. Other selections include Guan Hu’s Black Dog in Un Certain Regard, Lou Ye’s An Unfinished Film in the Special Screening section, and Soi Cheang’s action flick Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In taking a slot in the Midnight Screenings genre sidebar. 

“For me, coming back to show my first film at Cannes in six years — especially after the hard years of the pandemic times — it feels like I’m finally making my return to the cinema world,” says Jia, who was last in Cannes in 2018 with competition entry Ash Is Purest White. 

The bumper crop of Chinese titles in the selection, as well as the Chinese box office’s ongoing post-pandemic recovery — total theatrical revenue is currently up 2.5 percent compared to 2023 and many analysts believe China has a shot of unseating North America as the world’s biggest box office territory in 2024 — will provide a boost to international sales of Chinese titles at Cannes’ Marché du Film. Chinese buyers of foreign films, however, are expected to remain far fewer and choosier than they were during the country’s box office boom period of the 2010s. 

From Hollywood tentpoles to European festival titles, Western filmmaking’s share of China’s box office pie remains at a generational low, and few in the industry anticipate a return to the 30-40 percent market share international movies claimed during the pre-pandemic era. Last year, international film releases comprised just 16 percent of China’s $7.73 billion annual box office total — and many of the biggest imported hits were Japanese anime releases. 

Veteran Chinese buyer Cindy Mi Lin, whose Beijing-based company Infotainment China Media recently released the U.S. documentary Kim’s Video, a sleeper hit from Sundance, says she’s decided to pivot toward acquiring remake rights at Cannes this year rather than importing finished U.S. and European films. 

“We’ve decided to switch to acquiring rights and remaking them as Chinese films because we believe releasing foreign films will be challenging for a long time to come,” she says, noting the recent $479 million (RMB 3.4 billion) box office success of Chinese director and star Jia Ling’s Yolo, a remake of the 2014 Japanese film 100 Yen Love. 

A select set of experienced Chinese buyers still believe some Western films can thread the needle of China’s regulatory and commercial landscape. 

“The Chinese public is getting increasingly more demanding in terms of quality. This is good for distributors like us who are focusing on high-end cinema,” notes Julien Favre, vp of Chinese distributor Road Pictures, which acquired last year’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner Anatomy of a Fall. Road Pictures released the film in March and saw it earn just shy of $4 million (RMB 28.3 million), which makes China the title’s third biggest box office territory behind France ($14.6 million) and North America ($5 million). 

Favre adds: “As far as Western content is concerned, the challenge is to find international films which have universal appeal, can cross the cultural divide and resonate with the Chinese audience by focusing on topics that are organically relevant to Chinese society. For the films that manage to hit this target, the potential is huge.” 

For Jia, a consummate artist who has navigated the complexities of being the face of independent Chinese filmmaking on the world stage with uncommon grace, simply being back at Cannes is a statement in itself. 

“For the past few years, there were not many Chinese films showcased in Cannes, but this year I’m coming back with my latest film, and several other Chinese filmmakers are coming, too,” he says. “Together, we are telling the world that we never stopped — we never stopped shooting and we never stopped telling our story. Most importantly, we never lost our courage.”