Shanghai Jury Chair Giuseppe Tornatore Says Picking Film Fest Winners “Is Actually Very Simple”

Oscar-winner Giuseppe Tornatore, jury head of the 27^th Shanghai International Film Festival (SIFF), says he will be looking for films that touch his heart as he chairs selection of this year’s Golden Goblet Award winners.

“When I enter a film screening and close my eyes, I always return to the feeling of being an audience member,” Tornatore said Friday during the Shanghai jury’s meeting with the international media. “I always hope that the film will bring me a pleasant surprise every time I go to the cinema.”

The Italian filmmaker is best-known for his Academy Award-winner Cinema Paradiso (1988), a film in which a young boy is swept away by the magic of the movies — and the 69-year-old Tornatore said that was the feeling he would be chasing throughout SIFF’s 10-day run.

“Every time I go to the cinema to watch a movie, I don’t want to have a preconceived idea or specific expectation of what I want to see,” said the filmmaker. “For us judges, actually choosing who will eventually win should be a simple matter. The movie that wins an award must be able to touch the depths of each judge’s heart. Looking at it this way, this selection process is actually very simple.”

Tornatore is joined on Shanghai’s main jury by a trio of Chinese talent — director Yang Lina, actor-director Huang Bo and actress Yong Mei — alongside Argentinian filmmaker Iván Fund, Greek producer Thanassis Karathanos, and Indian director Kiran Rao.

The group’s task is to choose from 12 wildly diverse international productions, which were shortlisted from a record 3,900 submissions, according to festival organizers.

On the local front, Chinese director Wang Tong’s ambitious genre-bender Wild Nights, Tamed Beasts, which mixes noir-tinged drama with social realism, generated some of the most vocal buzz this week during SIFF’s pre-festival media preview screenings. The other Chinese features in the main competition are fest-favorite Cao Baoping’s high-voltage comedy One Wacky Summer and Qiu Sheng’s domestic drama My Father’s Son.

SIFF is keen to hype its role as a window into talents and trends emerging in Chinese cinema. The event is screening around 60 Chinese-language movies across its five competitions, including several world premieres and restored classics. For their part, the Golden Goblet jury is keen to dig in.

“I very happy that three Chinese films have been nominated this time, but of course, there are many other excellent films from all over the world that have been nominated, too,” said Huang. “This diversity actually ensures that the final outcome is very honest. It’s like if we all drank the same drink. Some would like spicy, sweet, salty, or slightly bitter flavors. This kind of balance is really important. It ensures a certain level of objectivity that makes everyone feel more rational.”

There’s also early buzz surrounding Swiss director Nicolas Steiner’s hypnotic dive into magical realism, You Believe in Angels, Mr. Drowak? (Germany, Switzerland), Poland’s tension-packed theatre-based drama Loss of Balance (Korek Bojanowski) and Portuguese director António Ferreira’s The Scent of Things Remembered (Portugal-Brazil), which stars the impressive José Martins as a former soldier forced to confront his demons.

Rounding out the selection is the Chilean-UK-French co-production After the Fog from British-German filmmaker Miriam Heard, Black Red Yellow (Kyrgyzstan) from Aktan Arym Kubat, Flavia Castro’s Cyclone (Brazil), Luisa from Germany’s Julia Roesler, Japan’s On Summer Sand by Shinya Tamada, and the Argentina-Spain-Chile co-production The Reborn from Santiago Esteves.

“I think the films that are on offer are clearly some of the best films made this year in the world,” added Rao at Friday’s presser. “So we really will have, I’m sure, a lot to discuss and a difficult choice to make — but there’s a feast for us to watch and enjoy.”