director of the millennium

Chapter 774 Awards
In the second week of March 2018, less than a week after Wu Yuan started filming "The Monkey King", he gave the crew two days off and flew to Dali in a low-key manner.

By the time he arrived in Dali, the Dali International Film Festival was already coming to an end and the most important closing ceremony and awards presentation were about to take place.

Wu Yuan did not participate in the judging process this year at all, including the invitation to the jury, which was just a borrowed name. In fact, it was the Light and Shadow Era Film Festival preparatory team that invited him.

However, his reputation is still very useful, and he still invited the most influential filmmakers in Asia, Africa and Latin America to form a five-member jury.

Moreover, the chairman of the jury this year is Chen Kaige, who was also invited thanks to Wu Yuan's reputation.

Chen Kaige, who had just finished working on "Legend of the Cat Demon", came to review the films happily and participated in the entire film week. It is said that during the jury's internal meeting, he had an argument with a judge. It seems that there is a film this session that Chen Kaige really likes.

Wu Yuan did not try to understand the specific situation, nor did he want to interfere. After all, the Dali International Film Festival will eventually mature and cannot always rely on its fame. Gradually reducing its influence in subsequent sessions is what the Dali International Film Festival needs to do now.

Of course, he will be present at the second session.

The closing ceremony began at 2 p.m. the day after Wu Yuan arrived in Dali.

The closing ceremony of the Dali International Film Festival was scheduled to be held outdoors, directly in the ancient city of Dali, with a long red carpet.

However, Wu Yuan, the chairman of the organizing committee, did not walk the red carpet. While the participating crews were walking the red carpet with beaming faces, he was already backstage looking at the freshly announced list of winners.

The Dali International Film Festival has three units, namely the feature film unit, the short film unit and the new film unit. Among them, only the feature film unit is important, and Wu Yuan is also concerned about this unit.

After intense discussion and voting by the jury, the winner of this year's Dali International Film Festival Feature Film Section - Special Attention (Best Film) Award is an Indian independent film called "Soni".

After reading the plot synopsis of this movie, Wu Yuan was full of complaints.

This film is a rare realistic subject in Indian films, and it fully exposes the oppression of women from the lower classes of society.

What oppression?

There are more than 20,000 violent crimes against women in India every year. On average, a woman is raped every 22 minutes and a woman dies from domestic violence every six hours.

The main story of the film tells the story of a young grassroots policewoman, Soni, and her boss Kapana, who take over the investigation of different cases of violence against women in Delhi. In the process of handling the case, they often encounter major resistance, involving various dark aspects, and even affecting their own lives.

Well, this is an art film.

How should I put it? The fact that this movie won the Best Picture award gave Wu Yuan an indescribable strange feeling, as if he suddenly understood why the "banned films" of the fifth generation directors were so popular in the European art market and even won many awards.

As expected, this kind of movie that exposes the ugly side of one's own country can attract the interest and attention of foreigners, and may even win awards.

The fact that "Soni", a film from India, won the Best Film Award at the Dali International Film Festival is not a replica of the situation that Chinese-language filmmakers once faced in Europe.

As long as you make a film that shows the ugliness of your country, you can win awards.
Of course, perhaps this is also because Wu Yuan's ideas are too dark. At least neither he nor Guangying Times made any hints to the judges, asking them to give the green light to such a movie.

The fact that "Soni" won the award was really the result of the unanimous approval of the five judges. It can only be said that this group of people who make art films just like this. If they don't use the dark side of society and themes such as oppression and persecution, it will be difficult to win awards. Wu Yuan did not comment on this. Anyway, all art film festivals in the world do this, so there is no need for him to sing a different tune. In short, he just needs to trust the judges' vision.

In addition to "Soni", the Best Director Award was won by a Serbian film called "Space". This film uses a road movie-like approach to show the situation in Serbia during the bombing, and cleverly incorporates the history of the Balkan Peninsula throughout, reflecting the devastation of war on the people. It can be regarded as an anti-war film, so it is normal for it to win an award.

As for the second place "Jury Award", it was won by a movie called "Spring Festival".

Well, this movie has something to do with Wu Yuan, or to be more precise, it is related to Beijing Film Academy. One of the producers of this movie is Tian Zhuangzhuang, the director is a female director who graduated from Beijing Film Academy, and the investor is Wanda.

In a word, this director has a deep and strong background, and is a legitimate academic, so much so that even Chen Kaige had to give him face, and give face to his alma mater, and was somewhat biased in judging the awards.

Apart from that, Wu Yuan didn't pay much attention to the remaining awards as well as the short film and newcomer categories. He didn't even have any impression of the films nominated for the awards, and he hardly knew the directors and actors.

All I can say is that the Dali International Film Festival still has a long way to go.

By the time he had almost finished reading the list of winners, the red carpet event at the front desk was basically over. The various media invited to the scene had already posted the first batch of reports on the Internet, and the award ceremony officially began.

As the chairman of the organizing committee, Wu Yuan was the first to go on stage and give a speech, which mainly consisted of some clichés about basing himself on the current film industry, looking forward to future films, and encouraging third world filmmakers.

After he finished his speech, Chen Kaige gave a speech on behalf of the jury, and the award ceremony officially began.

The five judges of the jury plus Wu Yuan, the chairman of the organizing committee, became the main award presenters of this year's award ceremony, taking turns to present awards to the winning crews.

Although the Dali International Film Festival is a very young film festival, winning an award is definitely a happy thing for any crew, and the atmosphere on site is naturally very good.

However, happy times are always short-lived, and soon the award ceremony, which did not have many awards, came to an end.

Standing on the stage, Wu Yuan presented the last and most important award.

"The film that won the Special Attention Award in the Feature Film Section of this year's Dali International Film Festival is!"

He slowly unfolded the folded letter paper in his hand and looked at the foreign crew sitting at the front table with a bright smile: "Congratulations to the "Soni" crew from India!"

A group of Indians with brown skin stood up in surprise, hugged each other and cheered. After a while, they walked up to the podium amid applause.

A film like this that depicts the oppression of lower-class women in India had a very difficult time in its native India, and winning an award abroad was a very exciting thing for the entire crew!

"Thank you, Chairman Wu Yuan!"

"Thank you very much!" The bearded director of "Sony" took the framed certificate from Wu Yuan with tears in his eyes.

(End of this chapter)