Malaysia film wins Jury Grand Prix at Shanghai International Film Festival

SHANGHAI: Director Tan Chui Mui’s feature film, Barbarian Invasion has won the Jury Grand Prix at the 24th Shanghai International Film Festival (SIFF) Golden Goblet Award Ceremony last night.

As the highest prize in SIFF, Golden Goblet Award brings together over 2,000 films from more than 100 countries and regions around the world every year. This year, a total of 13 international feature films were selected to compete in the main competition category.

The juries included Huang Jianxin, Anthony Chen, Deng Chao, Marco Müller, Natacha Devillers, Matthias Delvaux and Zhou Dongyu.

The two highest awards of the Golden Goblet Awards, Best Feature Film and Jury Grand Prix, were won by Manchurian Tiger (China) and Barbarian Invasion (Malaysia) respectively.

Barbarian Invasion is an arthouse action film. This is the third feature film directed by Tan Chui Mui after a decade. Apart from being the director and writer, she also challenged herselfto play the main lead.

The SIFF juries commented: “This film takes a genre that is familiar to us all and turns it on its tail. It’s handling of pace is pitch perfect, as it continues to subvert and surprise at each turn. The director also bravely tackles her film through throwing herself fearlessly in the leading role.”

Barbarian Invasion is one of the films under a new initiative established by China’s Heaven Pictures and Hong Kong International Film Festival Society (HKIFFS), entitled “Back to Basic (B2B): A Love Supreme”.

This initiative invites six notable Asian filmmakers to direct feature films under a limited budget.

As director Tan could not attend the ceremony due to the pandemic, the project producer Yang Jin represented her to receive the award, he said, “Jacob Wong and I planned the “B2B” project, returning to the essence of the film. It was to invite six directors to shoot the films with only one million (RMB) budget.

They use superpowers to challenge the border and bottom line of the art film. Director Tan’s project is very well done. This proves one point, you don’t need extra money to make a movie, you just need talent.”

Producer Woo Ming Jin said, “We’re extremely excited and grateful for this award. We hope with this award the film will find a greater audience in China and also the rest of the world.”

Co-producer from the Philippines, Bianca Balbuena said, “Thankful for this recognition, a nod to Malaysian cinema. It is a great encouragement to mother-filmmakers to continue doing what they do! Very happy that the film resonated to the jury and to a big audience at SIFF.”

“To see the film receive a good response in that part of the world really gives me a

much-needed dose of optimism especially in this pandemic times. Kudos to Ming Jin, Chui.