4 August 2020
On 28 July, the SIFF Project of the 23rd Shanghai International Film Festival announced its honor list. The short film "A Blue Daydream" by Liu Dazhi, a graduate of 2018 from the Radio and Television Editing and Directing major of the College of Film and Television of Shanghai Theatre Academy (STA), stood out from the 10 projects that were shortlisted for the "New Talent Project" unit of this year’s SIFF Project, and won the "Best New Talent " award as one of the only two award winners for this unit.
The short film "A Blue Daydream" was the graduation creation of Liu Dazhi, which won STA’s “Outstanding Graduation Work” award of that year. The award-winning screenplay is the optimized version after two years' elaborate polishing on the basis of the graduation work of that year.
Since its inception in 2007, SIFF Project has been successfully held for 13 years, witnessing 75 projects entering the production. It is an incubator for outstanding works and an important platform for the industry to discover new talents of Chinese language movies. At present, it includes four units, namely, New Talent Project, SIFF Project, Co-production Project and Workin Progress Project, and providesconnection services such as incubation, financing and promotion.
This year, the SIFF Project received a total of 450 submissions from 9 countries, of which 39 projects stood out, including 10 projects shortlisted for the "New Talent Project" unit, 3 projects shortlisted for the "Co-production Project" unit, 16 projects shortlisted for the "SIFF Project" unit, and 10 projects shortlisted for the "Work in Progress Project". During the festival, 509 talks, three rounds of "Work in Progress Project" previews and 20 public presentations were held. This year, the SIFF Project has formed a strategic partnership with the Shanghai Film Group Co Ltd. The latter will provide RMB 200,000 for each winner of the “New Talent Project”, “Best Creative Project” and “Jury’s Special Recommendation Project” in support of screenplay creation and concept film shooting. At the same time, it has also provided venue support for this year’s SIFF Project. In addition, eight partner organizations have set up awards in the SIFF Project.
