Organizers of this year’s Beijing International Film Festival have lined up a range of top industry figures for the Chinese capital's top cinema event, including Paramount Pictures COO Frederick Huntsberry, Gravity director Alfonso Cuaron and Frozen producer Peter Del Vecho.
Other attendees taking part in panel discussions at the fest, which runs from April 16-23, include Motion Picture Association of America president Christopher Dodd, directors Oliver Stone and Timur Bekmambetov and British producer Peter Ziering. French director Jean-Jacques Annaud, Taiwanese film scholar Peggy Chiao, Chinese director Xue Xiaolu and “two other guests of great influence” are yet to be confirmed.
An animation forum will see Frozen visual effects specialist Dale Mayeda, leading Chinese animation specialist Sun Lijun, Rio director Carlos Saldanha, Aardman Animation’s co-founder Peter Lord and David Bai, general project manager of Dargaud China.
Spanish producer Andres Vicente Gomez, Irish director Jim Sheridan, Chinese director Lu Chuan, Italian actress Maria Grazia Cucinotta, French filmmaker Philippe Muyl and Indian director Rajkumar Hirani will make up the John Woo-led jury to decide the event's Tiantan Awards at the Beijing fest.
The jury was announced at an event in Beijing, attended by senior Chinese industry figures including Luan Guozhi, the deputy head of the Film Bureau, who is vice secretary-general of the organizing committee.
There will be market screenings and the total value of contracts signed during the market is expected to exceed last year’s $1.4 billion.
By the deadline at the end of 2013, 837 films from 88 countries had registered to compete for the festival's Tiantan Awards, and after three rounds of selection, 15 out of the 837 entries advanced to the Competition Section.
The films selected include the French films A Promise by Patrice Leconte and Attila Marcel by Sylvain Chomet, Carmen, directed by Romanian director Doru Nitescu, the Serbian film Circles, directed by Srdan Golubovic, Hope by the South Korean director Lee Joon-ik and Anthony Chen’s Singaporean film Ilo Ilo.
It also includes the Georgian film In Bloom, Matterhorn by Diederik Ebbinge, the India-Canada joint production Siddharth, My Enemy Within by Yorgos Tsemberopoulos, Kim Mordaunt’s The Rocket, the Belgian movie Third Person; Zoran, My Nephew the Idiot by director Matteo Oleotto, and Wong Kar-Wai’s The Grandmaster and Peter Chan’s Partner.
The opening film will be the France-Germany co-production Beauty and the Beast, which features Vincent Cassel and Léa Seydoux.
The Film Magic-Beijing Forum will include a Sino-foreign film co-production forum, one on film creativity and a summit on the beauty of film.
Established in 2011 in the Chinese capital, past editions of the Beijing festival have attracted Hollywood figures including James Cameron, Luc Besson, Kathleen Kennedy and Keanu Reeves.
There is also a special section, Breathtaking IMAX Films, which reflects China’s love for Imax and will feature screenings of Imax titles such as the Transformers movies, The Avengers and Gravity in 3D.