Golden Koala Chinese Film Festival (GKCFF) Shortlist 2023 Announced: Ten Films Competing for Five Awards

A total of ten films are now shortlisted for the awards of Golden Koala Chinese Film Festival (GKCFF) 2023 after the recommendation by film selectors and the first round of careful selection by the festival committee.

The ten Chinese films on the shortlist have diverse styles and topics: A Long Day discusses affections; The Great Distance Delivers Crane and Goodbye the Groundhog describe the growth of youngsters; The Coffin Painter and A Video for My Friend’s Wedding reveal the insoluble homesickness; Fading Shadow and Antique Clock, Copper Basin and Cat are two entirely different types of crime films; the family comedies Table for Six and Back to Love represent the Northern and Southern Chinese folk customs respectively; and Mr. Zheng, the posthumous work of the well-known Chinese actor Tu Men, is about Alzheimer’s disease and the feelings of the elderly.

The shortlisted films are as follows:

Fading Shadow
126 minutes, Mandarin
In the 1990s, a homicide happened in Huaichuan, a small county along the river in Central China. The police portrait expert Zhang Xin was ordered to draw the suspect, but he drew surprisingly Yan Hua, a female dancer originally with the county art troupe who died over ten years ago. As all the people believed that Zhang Xin drew the image wrongly, the case was strangely associated with a serial-killer case in the 1980s. In order to prove himself, Zhang Xin gradually penetrated the mystery…

A Long Day
89 minutes, Mandarin
Valentine’s Day should be just one of the countless working days for Chen Lianggu (Jiang Zhongwei), whose daily routine is avoiding his indifferent wife and escaping into his caring lover’s home to enjoy tenderness for a while. However, on this day, a succession of unexpected things happens to him. It turns out that everyone has hidden secrets and is trying to find out the direction of their life. Chen is driving in the big city alternating between noise and tranquility, and yet he has never reached the destination, just as everyone loses their bearings in life.

Antique Clock, Copper Basin and Cat
100 minutes, Mandarin
Zhong Ming, a young man living in the modern city, is depressed by his grandma’s passing away. Unexpectedly, he is diagnosed with cancer. Zhong Ming has to adopt a cat and becomes attached to the delivery person Guan Chuntian because of the cat. Two antique clocks and one antique copper basin left by his grandma attract the special attention of a group of people: the CEO of a jewellery company Mr. Liu, the owner of an antique shop Bai Manghe and his assistant Zhu Hongshu, the shopkeeper of a pawnshop Xia Zheteng and a worker under him named San’er, the professional thief Shen Daomei, the junk dealer Fei Jin, the cleaner Aunt Qin, the ECO’s mother who is looking for the cat, and so on. They take turns showing their skills to contend with each other ceaselessly, making the chaotic situation even more complex and unmanageable…

The Great Distance Delivers Crane
90 minutes, Tibetan
This is a story of two Tibetan youngsters looking for the habitat of an injured black-necked crane and that of their heart.

Back to Love
101 minutes, Mandarin/Teochew
Zekai and Jingshan have been together for two years, pursuing their careers and livng a happy life in Shenzhen. However, Zekai’s mom, who lives in Shantou and does not know anything about this, keeps looking for a girlfriend for her son and even arranges blind dates in Shenzhen for him. Zekai understands it would be very difficult for his mom to accept Jingshan, who has had one marriage, so he hesitates to take Jingshan to meet his family. To deal with mom’s pushing him to get married, Zekai finally decides to marry Jingshan, go back to his hometown with her, and come clean with his mom about everything.

The Coffin Painter
95 minutes, Mandarin
The death of his son makes Jia lock the door of his heart. Jia leaves everything aside and goes to the murderer’s hometown to wait for him to be released from prison. However, Jia gets into new difficulty with the appearance of a young girl, his neighbour Xiao Qi.

Table for Six
120 minutes, Cantonese/Mandarin
Three brothers reside in a home, the eldest brother Steve’s (Chi-Wah Wong) his two younger brothers Bernard (Louis Cheung) and Lung (Peter Chan). A family reunion dinner turns awkward when Bernard arrives with his new girlfriend Monica (Stephy Tang), who happens to be Steve’s old flame. Driven by his pride, Steve agrees to be the boyfriend of his new friend Meow (Min Chen Lin). The youngest brother Lung and his girlfriend Josephine (Ivana Wong) are also faced with challenges in their long-term relationship. Under the same roof, anything among the six people that can go wrong during the dinner goes laughably berserk. How will Steve choose between his old flame and new friend? What will happen to the family while they are trying to maintain harmony?

A Video for My Friend’s Wedding
98 minutes, Shanxi Dialect/Mandarin
Kaiyuan, who studied film in Beijing Film Academy, returned to his hometown Fenyang during the Chinese New Year. At the invitation of his high school classmate Gao Peng, he was the wedding photographer of Gao Peng and Xiaoyu to shoot wedding documentaries for them. During the week, Kaiyuan followed them to record Fenyang. Bit by bit in the county town, the camera seems to have discovered the secret of the death of their common high school classmate Wang Jie while following the protagonist… and it stirred up the storm before the wedding. In the end, the couple held the wedding smoothly, but the storms of life won’t stop because of …

Using the techniques of mockumentary, found footage and glitch art, this film depicted Kaiyuan shooting the wedding documentaries for Gao Peng and Xiaoyu after returning to his hometown during the Chinese New Year while it was not plain sailing with the wedding combined with ghost wedding.

Mr. Zheng
100 minutes, Mandarin
“If life is irreversible, I would like to use my last courage in exchange for all my memories of you.” The film tells the story of Mr. Zheng, a man suffering from Alzheimer’s disease who couldn’t bear to forget his late wife and embarks on his final journey an island trip. Before he completely loses his memories, Mr. Zheng goes on an island trip to the place he missed the most from his youth. Along the way, he meets a young woman, and she accompanies him as they have similar feelings and journeys…

Goodbye the Groundhog
83 minutes, Tibetan/Mandarin
In Mosica Village (Sichuan, China), a young boy Qunpei is attracted by the tablet computer of a trader from other places. Succumbing to temptation, the boy makes a deal with the trader – he will give the trader a wild groundhog in exchange for the tablet. When the trader is going to take the groundhog away, the boy is filled with remorse and therefore starts to save it with his friend.

After the second round of selection, the nominees will be released by the end of December 2022 and the winners by January 10, 2023.

Modified: December 4, 2022
Translated by Tian Su