Chinese film sales company Parallax Films is ready to make a splash in Tokyo this week. The company has two titles in the Tokyo International Film Festival’s official selection and a host of festival-bound Chinese films in the TIFFCOM market.
In the main competition is A Long Shot, a crime drama from first-time feature director Gao Peng. The film is set in the 1980s, when China’s modernisation was just beginning. But in the rust belt of the northeast, factories were already in decline and theft was on the rise. The story follows a former sniper who retires to become a factory security guard and tries to steer the son of a woman he cares for away from crime. The film stars Zu Feng, Qin Hailu and Zhou Zhengjie.
German cinematographer Florian Zinke, whose other Asian film credits include “Nina Wu” and Eva Jin’s “Legend of Sun and Moon”, and who will be shooting the upcoming “The Sand Murmurs”, has been hired as director of photography. Asia-based French editor Mathieu Laclau (“Ash Is Purest White,” “Wild Goose Lake,” “Ripples of Life”) is also on board.
“Love is a Gun”, a drama about a young man determined to break free from his troubled past, debuted at the Venice Film Festival and is expanding its career with stops in Tokyo and Mumbai. Made in Taiwan on a shoestring budget by director, co-writer and star Lee Hong-chi, the film “reveals the talent of a new young auteur who is destined to become one of the leading names in contemporary Asian cinema,” says Beatrice Fiorentino, general delegate of the Venice Critics’ Week.
In the TIFFCOM market, Parallax is also pitching “Carefree Days”, a mainland Chinese romantic drama by Liang Ming, which played in the New Directors Competition section at the San Sebastian festival last month, and “Borrowed Time”, which recently played in Busan. Choy Ji’s debut film explores the links between Hong Kong and the Cantonese-speaking mainland city of Guangzhou through the lens of a woman who unearths her parents’ early relationship. She mixes past and present, reality and fantasy.
Parallax is part of the film production and service brand Midnight Blur, which is dedicated to developing and producing films of international vision and idiosyncratic style, both commercial and arthouse. One of the few Chinese companies to consistently work the international festival and market circuit, Parallax also has a sister company, Deepfocus, which it describes as a “multi-platform media brand”.
Upcoming titles still in post-production include Great Expectations and Another Day of Hope. A comedy-drama about a father-son relationship, “Great Expectations” is the second feature from Xu Lei, whose debut “Sherlock on the Plain” won an award at the 2018 edition of the First International Film Festival. “Another Day of Hope” is a black-and-white social drama about an ordinary couple whose life becomes challenging after an accident. It was written and directed by debut feature film director Liu Taifeng.
