China celebrated its Golden Rooster Awards this past Tuesday night in a glittering ceremony hosted inside the palatial Xiamen Strait Grand Theater in Xiamen, Fujian Province, China.
The southern seaside city hosted generations of stars — from current hotshot Jackson Yee (Resurrection) to acclaimed auteur Zhang Yimou — for an event that is the highlight of the annual state-run Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival.
Hong Kong’s Tony Leung Ka Fai stole the show, winning his first Golden Rooster best actor nod for his turn as the villain in the Larry Yang-directed thriller The Shadow’s Edge — some 25 years on from sending hearts a flutter across the globe in Jean-Jacques Annaud’s steamy The Lover.
“I hope this is just the beginning of new journey,” said the veteran of more than 140 movies.
Behind the scenes the business of making movies was very much front and center, as the Chinese industry gathered for seminars and workshops it hopes will chart its future course.
Here’s what The Hollywood Reporter learned from the week:
Yimou Urges Filmmakers to Stay Focused on the Story
Zhang Yimou brought a sense of gravitas to proceedings across the week. The 76-year-old was there among all the fanfare at the event’s Golden Rooster Awards, handing out the Best Feature Film award to director Shen Ao and his WW2 drama Dead to Rights while also mingling with all the stars and watching on — in awe, like everyone in the room — as a massive dragon drone cruised the air overhead.
Yimou had also helped launch the industry side of proceedings with a “Stories That Travel: Chinese and Asian Cinema in Dialogue with the World” seminar that gathered reps from international festivals and, soon enough, saw talk turn to Artificial Intelligence and its effect on cinema.
With Zhang’s adaptation of Liu Cixin sci-fi classic The Three-Body Problem in the works the director revealed he’d started to dabble in the tech, with a dedicated team set up on set to explore how AI could be adapted to the filmmaking process.
In his own inimitable way, the director then set the scene for the week ahead when he urged his fellow filmmakers to do the same — but to never lose site of the main ingredient: The story.
“The new technology is moving too fast,” the director said. “The moment you blink, you are behind it. So, embrace this era. But for me filmmaking is about the story that’s in my heart, and the only thing I can do is to tell it the best way I can.”
Star-Studded Golden Roosters Celebrate a Big Year for the Locals
The news coming into the week was that so far this year Chinese cinemas have been dominated by Chinese movies, with eight of the year’s box office top 10 being domestic productions.
The industry itself has been big on spreading a message of diversification of content, and to that end the two films that dominated “China’s Oscars” could not possibly be more different in either style nor in content.
Shen’s Dead to Rights — with Golden Rooster Best Actress winner Gao Ye shining — collected more than $380 million and sets itself around the infamous Nanjing massacre and the real-life story of the photo studio that documented the horror. It’s a gripping often brutal tale — and features two of China’s most bankable stars in Gao and Liu Haoran (Detective Chinatown).
Lan Hongchun’s Dear You — winner of both Special Jury Prize and Best Screenplay — collected around $300 million and sets itself around the story of one of the thousands of migrant Chinese families separated through economic necessity in the 1950s and ’60s. It’s a languid tear-jerker, and it stars a cast of complete unknowns.
Dear You was the surprise hit of the year in China and it reached an enthusiastic global audience. Lan was beside himself on stage. “It feels like I’m dreaming,” he said. “I want to thank my grandma in heaven, because she told me so many stories when I was little.”
Opening night under the stars at the Bailuzhou Park Water Square in Xiamen was a treat for the young families who packed the venue for the China debut of another film that speaks to the Chinese diaspora and — the filmmakers hope — will to the domestic audience too.
The Singapore-Spain-Italy production The Violinist has already won best film at the 2026 Annecy International Animation Film Festival and best animated film at the 19th Asia Pacific Screen Awards. Set among the Chinese community, it follows the fortunes of two childhood friends separated by war, and it had the audience, including all those kids, transfixed.
“Singapore’s animation industry is very small, and the country is small too. So, with a production of this scale, one person can’t do it alone,” co-director Ervin Han explained. “We started by looking overseas for co-producers. As it happened, we had a lot of friends in the animation industry. So, all together, we’re telling a story about a part of the history of us Singaporean Chinese.”
Producer Cristiano Bortone also took to the stage before the premiere and picked up on what was one of the central themes of this year’s festival: sharing Chinese stories with the world. Bortone The Violinist “delves deeply into Chinese and Asian culture, while also capturing a European style and sensibility.”
“This is the beauty of blending our cultures,” he added.
China’s next generation was out in force across the industry events, and they basically filled the room at the “Golden Rooster Film Academy II: Ark Lab AI” workshop.
Lan Tian, the creative director behind joint-generation AI model Seedance 2.5, took the room and didn’t shy away from exploring its impact in what turned into a candid discussion about how the technology was already impacting the film industry.
The AI industry has been embraced in China arguably like anywhere else, and already has an estimated worth of around $176 billion, while the short-drama and digital film market is expected to top $6 billion this year. The pitch from Lan was on the savings the new tech can provide.
“If you get an investment of one million, or less than one million you might be able to produce something that looks like it cost 10 million,” he said.
But Lan’s push was also to use his technology as a tool that supports “reality.”
“My girlfriend is an actor so I know there is concern,” he said. “The creative approach I’m talking about may only require a studio and some props that interact with the actors. But I want this prop to be real, too. For instance, if I need to drink water, I want the water to be real.”
Festival Spotlight Turns to Young Filmmakers
While AI dominated proceedings, it was encouraging to see young filmmakers committed to the traditions of cinema out and about.
Yan Siyu was among those featured during pitching sessions that placed emerging talent in front of international festival and studio reps. Her debut Outside The Room of My Own focusses on the journey three generation of women who take back to their ancestral village, and she echoed the words of Zhang that had opened the whole week.
“I want to reach out to people to let them know there is this film in China. It’s a female director’s debut and I can say it’s a really good film,” she said. “This film is not just my work, because I have a lot of people supporting me. I can’t let them down. It’s a story that comes from my heart — and in telling it I am sharing my deepest feelings.”
