In this panel, three directors with new films screening at the 2018 New York Asian Film Festival—including two making their directorial debuts, Dong Yue (The Looming Storm) and Jiang Jiachen (Looking for Lucky); and Xin Yukun (Wrath of Silence)—are joined by veteran producer Guan Yadi to discuss the state of Mainland Chinese cinema and the rise of a new genre cinema
Guan Yadi is at the forefront of a new genre cinema emerging in China. A former executive at PolyBona Film Distribution, Fantasy Pictures and Galloping Horse, he founded Life Pictures and Courage Media to kickstart medium-budget genre films.
After graduating from the Beijing Film Academy's photography department in 2009, Xin Yukun directed the short film Seven Nights (2010). Influenced by Paul Haggis' Crash, and similarly interweaving the fates of different characters, it displayed his playfulness with narrative structure. After developing the screenplay for three years, he directed his striking debut feature The Coffin In the Mountain, a twisty crime drama set in a remote Chinese village that made six times its budget at the China box office. He returns to rural China with the western-noir Wrath of Silence, set near his own hometown on the border of Mongolia.
Born in Weihai in China's eastern Shandong province, Dong Yue graduated from the Beijing Film Academy and then earned his master’s degree in photography. He worked as a cinematographer on several films, including Wang Zhi's The Journey Away (2009), but primarily honed his craft in the field of advertising. For his directorial debut The Looming Storm, he chose to write a thriller set in an industrial town in 1997 to focus on the "psychological status of ordinary people" when Chinese society was going through extraordinary change. In March, Dong won Best New Director at the Asian Film Awards for his debut.
Jiang Jiachen hails from Shenyang in northeast China where he graduated from the LuXun Academy of Fine Arts. He directed the short films The Dog Days (2004) and The Thieves (2005). In 2016, he was selected as one of 15 candidates for the China Film Directors Guild's (CFDG) first Young Directors Support Program. His debut feature Looking for Lucky, based on the characters of friends from his hometown, won the inaugural Early Bird New Directors Film Fund of the Hong Kong International Film Festival. Jiang's screenplay is also nominated at this month's Shanghai International Film Festival’s Asian New Talent Awards.
