While the highlight works of major film festivals have already left ripples across the globe, Hainan, relying on its unique geographical and climatic advantages, has become an important coordinate for domestic cinephiles to conduct their annual viewing summaries. The "Island-Wide Carnival" section of the 7th Hainan Island International Film Festival (HIIFF) grandly presents five chapters: "Screened and Rescreened", "Traces of Growth", "Midnight Thrills", "Female Narratives", and "Shoreline Stories". From December 3 to December 9 this year, it will create an audio-visual feast spanning styles and themes for cinephiles—featuring popular films from the Audience Award screenings, the promising debuts of young directors, profound attention to women, growth, and marginalized worlds, as well as the poetic imagination brought by islands and shores.
Fest Best:
One Screening After Another
Screened and Rescreened
"Screened and Rescreened" brings films that have won audience affection at multiple festivals; they are invited back to the screen time and again, meeting different audiences, resonating, and generating new echoes. Director Bian Zhuo's debut As The Water Flows tells the story of a three-generation family, using the enduring scenery of Kunming's Green Lake as a backdrop to outline the gentle rifts between the three generations. Directed by Maryam Touzani and winner of the Audience Award at this year's Venice Film Festival, Calle Malaga tells the process of a lonely elderly woman rebuilding her life; the protagonist played by Carmen Maura is full of vitality, burning with desire and tenderness over the years. Heads or Tails?, directed by Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis, blends the Western styles of Italy and the United States, and won Best Director at the recently closed Tokyo International Film Festival. Olivier Lacasse, whose work was previously shortlisted for the Golden Coconut Awards feature film section, also presented his new work this year. Sirât, as one of the must-see hits of the festival, has already met Hainan audiences during the advance screening stage and will continue to be screened during the festival.
Traces of Growth
"Traces of Growth" features 4 feature-length debuts that inscribe the sorrows of growing up; they are both chronicles of individual experiences at different ages and cross-sections of an era's mood. The French animated film Hello, Emile, co-directed by Maïlys Vallade and Lian-Cho Han, employs a unique visual style to let the audience feel a child's growing pains and the world's quietness and mystery through Emile's perspective. Brazilian director Rafaela Camelo's The Nature of Invisible Things allows two little girls to meet in a hospital, experiencing loss, growth, and parting during a brief summer; it is also a gentle inquiry into cross-generational relationships and communal emotions. Korean-American director Myung Jin-ho tells the coming-of-age struggles of a pair of Thai siblings relying on each other in the metropolis of New York in Softshell; the documentary sensitivity brought by handheld 16mm film photography delicately captures the vulnerability and loneliness of the two protagonists in the city before reaching adulthood. Sophie Somerville captures the Melbourne city journey of two women in their twenties in Fwends, a walk that is sometimes light and sometimes heavy, revealing generational unease and the warmth of mutual comfort in the silent moments. If growing up is inherently a journey of shifting landscapes, then "Traces of Growth" not only brings us the vastly different scenery along the way but also makes us perceive those fissures that have not yet healed.
Midnight Thrills
"Midnight Thrills" amplifies the senses and plucks the nerves of horror. Three films from the "horror powerhouse" countries of Thailand, the United States, and Italy will be showcased together, including Thaweelap Wanthawee's Attack 13, Albert Birney's Obex, and Paulo Stripolli's The Holy Boy. The three films either present the touch of horror through the treacherous human nature on a campus, show a horror fable for the media age through the gradual collapse of the boundary between virtual and real, or explore the dark secrets behind faith through the fanatical folk customs of a closed town, representing new breakthroughs in the classic horror genre in recent years.
Female Narratives
"Female Narratives" presents the multiple facets of women in identity, relationships, and self-construction across different cultural contexts. The directors of Writing Hawa, Najiba Nouri and Rasoul Nouri, focus their lens on a mother in Afghanistan, writing a blood-and-tears epic of three generations of women in the family during turbulent times. Spanish director Eva Libertad's Deaf presents the anxiety of motherhood, the rupture of communication, and society's invisible boundaries in delicate imagery, revealing the often-ignored plight of marginalized social groups. Co-directed by Lenny Git and Harpo Git, Heads or Fails uses rich French humor and a screwball comedy atmosphere to present a subversive female image, a "nobody" who keeps betting and failing, reunderstanding intimacy and freedom through the experience of "losing". Valentin Cadiche in That Summer in Paris revisits Paris during the Olympics through the perspective of a Norman woman. As she navigates the city, the urban landscape and personal emotions reflect each other, presenting a portrait of a contemporary woman finding her own rhythm amidst the events of the times. Kristen Stewart's new work as a first-time director, The Chronology of Water, based on an autobiographical text, sensitively and sharply traces a spiritual journey between falling and rebirth in poetic imagery.
Shoreline Stories
"Stories on the Shore" resonates with the natural setting of the Hainan Island International Film Festival (HIIFF). Through four films set on the shore, it depicts the subtle and continuous connection between people, land, and water in contemporary imagery. Luis Patiño's new work The Blue Trail transforms the island into a theater. Through a multi-layered narrative overlapping reality and fiction, drama and daily life, it makes the audience feel as if they are walking in a floating world locked by time and memory. Lillian T. Merrill's Honeyjoon also takes place among an archipelago. Through a lighthearted and humorous vacation trip, it presents the emotional fluctuations between a mother and daughter from a keen female perspective. Eleanor Mortimer's How Deep Is Your Love captures the marine micro-ecology with extremely delicate cinematography, turning the deep sea into a dreamlike space through imaginative editing, while also reminding us that we live on a planet where humans are not the center of everything. Gabriel Mascaro's The Blue Trail won the Jury Grand Prix in the main competition at the Berlin International Film Festival, directly addressing Brazilian social issues and delivering a sharp response to unreasonable systems through a secret journey across the Amazon River.
Swipe left for more film selections
As an important manifestation of the HIIFF's festival philosophy of "year-round screening, island-wide screening, public viewing, and whole industry chain," the film screenings of this edition of the festival will be held at 12 cinemas across Hainan Island, allowing us to transcend spatial distances and be illuminated together by the light of cinema.
Cinema List
Sanya City:
Sanya Xingyue Cinemas (Summer Station)
Bona International Cinemas Sanya Joy City Branch
Sanya 1+X Mangrove Cinemas
Sanya Zhongshi International Cinemas (Blue Ocean Branch)
Online Xingyue Cinemas (Yazhou Culture and Sports Center Branch)
Haikou City:
Wanda Cinemas IMAX Haikou Riyue Plaza Branch
MixC Cinemas (Haikou MixC Dolby Giant Screen Branch)
CGV Cinemas Friendship Sunshine City IMAX Branch
Haikou China Film International Cinemas (Shangbang Baihui City CINITY Branch)
Bona International Cinemas Haikou Longfor Paradise Walk Laser IMAX Branch
Haikou Zhongshi International Cinemas IMAX (Guoxiu City Branch)
Lingshui Li Autonomous County:
Lingshui Haifeng Cinema
From the city to the seaside, from sunset to dawn, with diverse themes and colorful screenings, let us immerse ourselves together in this island-wide carnival of light and shadow, allowing the dream of cinema to soar freely across the landscapes of Hainan.
More screening selections for the 7th HIIFF will be announced soon. We look forward to embarking on this journey of light and shadow with filmmakers and cinephiles from home and abroad, and, through inclusivity and creativity, discovering a broader world.
