Chinese cinema’s commercial strength and its changing production methods shared the spotlight at the Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival in Xiamen, Fujian Province. The annual state-run gathering brought stars and filmmakers together for Tuesday night’s awards ceremony at the Xiamen Strait Grand Theater, alongside industry seminars, workshops and pitching sessions.
Tony Leung Ka Fai won his first Golden Rooster best actor award for playing the villain in director Larry Yang’s thriller The Shadow’s Edge. The Hong Kong actor, whose career spans more than 140 movies, was among the prominent winners at a festival held as domestic productions accounted for eight of the year’s top 10 films at the Chinese box office.
Director Shen Ao’s World War II drama Dead to Rights received the Best Feature Film award, presented by Zhang Yimou. Gao Ye also won Best Actress for the film, which earned more than $380 million. Featuring Gao and Liu Haoran, it draws on the true story of a photo studio that documented the Nanjing massacre. A very different production, Lan Hongchun’s Dear You, took the Special Jury Prize and Best Screenplay award. Its story of a migrant Chinese family separated by economic necessity in the 1950s and 1960s, performed by a cast of unknown actors, brought in around $300 million.
Zhang used an industry seminar on bringing Chinese and Asian cinema to international audiences to discuss the opportunities and challenges of artificial intelligence. With his adaptation of Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem in development, he said a dedicated team had been established on set to investigate possible uses of AI. He encouraged filmmakers to engage with rapidly advancing technology while keeping storytelling at the center of their work.
International collaboration also featured in the Chinese premiere of The Violinist, screened outdoors at Xiamen’s Bailuzhou Park Water Square. The Singapore-Spain-Italy production follows two childhood friends separated by war within a Chinese community. It had already won best film at the 2026 Annecy International Animation Film Festival and best animated film at the 19th Asia Pacific Screen Awards. Co-director Ervin Han described overseas partnerships as essential to realizing a production of its scale within Singapore’s small animation industry.
At the Ark Lab AI workshop, Lan Tian, creative director behind the joint-generation AI model Seedance 2.5, discussed how the technology could lower production costs. He suggested that filmmakers working with an investment of one million or less could create images resembling a production costing 10 million. He also acknowledged actors’ concerns and described an approach that would retain performers and physical props.
Emerging filmmakers had opportunities to present their projects to international festival and studio representatives. Among them was Yan Siyu, whose debut Outside The Room of My Own follows three generations of women returning to their ancestral village. Echoing Zhang’s emphasis on personal storytelling, she described the film as an expression of her deepest feelings and stressed her responsibility to the people supporting it.
