Chinese language gross sales firm Parallax Movies has notched a batch of gross sales offers for director Qiu Jiongjiong‘s Locarno 2021 jury prize-winning historic drama A New Outdated Play. The acclaimed Chinese language indie movie has offered to France’s Carlotta Movies, Japan’s Katsuben Cinema Membership, and Singapore’s Cineaste Manufacturing Home for distribution throughout all Southeast Asian territories, excluding Indonesia and Vietnam. All three corporations are planning theatrical releases for the movie later this yr.
Based mostly in Shenzhen, Qiu is each a filmmaker and a well-regarded up to date artist. His work as an artist has been exhibited worldwide, and his filmmaking experiments with cinematic language and documentary methods have earned him a fame as one in all China’s most vital impartial administrators.
Loosely primarily based on the lifetime of the director’s grandfather, A New Outdated Play begins when the main clown performer in a famend theatre troupe passes away and is welcomed into the Underworld. As he relives his vivid recollections one final time earlier than getting into the afterlife, 50 years of artwork, wrestle and love play out towards the background of Twentieth-century China’s tumultuous historical past. The movie has an emotional immediacy however employs satirically distanced visible strategies, together with a theatrical tableaux filming model with conspicuously colourful and playful units and supernatural fantasy sequences.
Qiu’s fame has been on the rise steadily lately. In early 2024, each the College of Chicago and Hong Kong College staged retrospectives of his movies. London’s Backyard Cinema and Berlin’s CiLENS have related screening collection deliberate for later this yr.
Qiu just lately introduced his subsequent characteristic, Fuxi: Pleasure in 4 Chapters. The undertaking received the Undertaking D Award on the Hong Kong Asian Movie Financing Discussion board in March.
Based mostly in Beijing, Parallax Movies is the worldwide movie gross sales and distribution model of Midnight Blur Movies, specializing within the worldwide distribution of high quality Chinese language movies and publicity at worldwide movie festivals.