Chinese filmmakers help next-gen features get Berlin Film Festival premieres
Yang Mingming, Lhapal Gyal and Hu Bo will have films showing at the Berlinale thanks to support from established Chinese directors who served as producers for their projects
Feature films by three young Chinese filmmakers – Yang Mingming, Lhapal Gyal and Hu Bo – will receive their premieres at this year’s Berlin Film Festival. All have been produced by established Chinese filmmakers.
Their inclusion in an A-list festival such as the Berlinale, the 67th edition of which begins today, shows such auteurs now want to be known as practical producers – something at which some have had more success than others.
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The 31-year-old Yang’s Girls Always Happy, for instance, is the first feature film for which veteran director Yang Chao has served as an executive producer. His only previous credit as a producer was for Yang Mingming’s first short film, Female Directors, in 2012.
Set in a house in one of Beijing’s rickety hutongs, Yang’s work revolves around the fractious relationship between a frustrated young writer and her equally literary-minded mother. The film is being shown in the Berlin festival’s Panorama section.
Yang Chao’s effortshave found favour at the festival before; it selected his previous film, Crosscurrents, for its official competition in 2015.
Lhapal Gyal has worked as an assistant to director Pema Tseden; the duo reunited for Wangdrak’s Rain Boots, the 28-year-old’s first feature film.