‘Art College 1994’ Review: A Chinese Animation as Amiable but Directionless as Its Slacker Characters

Lise Pedersen Documentary filmmaker Jialing Zhang, who was nominated for an Emmy for “One Child Nation,” spoke to Variety about her latest film, “Total Trust,” which is running in the main competition at CPH:DOX, the Copenhagen Intl. Documentary Festival. It tells the chilling story of three women and their families fighting for their human rights in China, where state control is ubiquitous thanks to high technology surveillance, such as facial recognition, big data analysis and points systems that mean citizens gain or lose points depending on their behavior. Zhang’s intimate footage offers unprecedented access to the impact of this all-controlling system on the protagonists’ everyday lives.

reported Friday.The inquiry began late last year after TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, admitted that employees had wrongly captured information of American users of the social app, including data from two journalists and some of their associates, the Times reported.The U.S. government as been concerned for years about the growing popularity of TikTok and the influence the authoritarian Chinese government has over the company and how the app is used.Both the Trump and Biden administrations have investigated TikTok amid these concerns, and now FBI and the U.S.

Although Filmart felt quiet on its first morning, with many attendees glued to their phones watching the Oscars, it soon turned into a reasonably vibrant market, with sales companies locked in back-to-back meetings, new project announcements and a few star appearances to liven up proceedings. 

Vanessa Bryant and her daughters are honoring the late Kobe Bryant.

The Biden Administration appears to be playing hardball, insisting TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance divest the hugely popular video-sharing app in the U.S. According to the WSJ, it’s threatening a ban if that doesn’t happpen.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor The White House has told TikTok that parent company ByteDance, the Chinese internet giant, must sell its ownership position in the popular video app or face a ban in the U.S., TikTok said on Wednesday. The U.S. government made the demand citing national security concerns. The news was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. The U.S. government’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS), which is an interagency group oversees national security risks led by the Treasury Department that has the authority to block foreign transactions involving U.S. entities, “recently” demanded that ByteDance divest TikTok, per the Journal. 

Kobe Bryant.Vanessa Bryant and her three daughters -- Natalia, Bianka and Capri — all held hands as they unveiled the prints Wednesday in Hollywood, where Natalia also spoke about her late father's unparalleled work ethic and how he inspired her to study film at USC.Lakers president Jeanie Buss and former Lakers coach Byron Scott also attended the ceremony and briefly spoke before Natalia took the podium and offered a moving tribute to the «best girl dad.»«Most people knew him as a basketball player or storyteller. I got to know him as my dad, and lemme tell you, he's the MVP of girl dads, to say the least,» she said.

Richard Kuipers Murder, treachery and political intrigue are the juicy ingredients of Zhang Yimou’s “Full River Red,” an entertaining if overlong mystery-comedy set in the narrow passageways and dark chambers of a Song dynasty military compound in 1146. With a twist-packed plot to match its labyrinthine location, Zhang’s fast-paced film motors along nicely as an engaging “Knives Out”-style whodunnit before stumbling a little in the protracted final act. A Lunar New Year smash hit in China, “Full River Red” will be released on 150 North American screens by specialty distributor Niu Vision Media on March 17.  The biggest commercial success of Zhang’s distinguished 35-year career, “Full River Red” has already grossed a whopping $671 million at home since Jan. 22. The 157-minute blockbuster continues the string of hits (“Cliff Walkers,” “Shadow,” “Sniper”) he’s delivered since big-budget international co-production misfire “The Great Wall” in 2016. Much less ornately decorated and colorfully photographed than Zhang’s famous wuxia epics “House of Flying Daggers” and “Hero,” this intricately plotted outing is more concerned with wordplay than swordplay.

Marcus Lim Africa is turning out to be an unlikely market for Chinese television producers, according to one production executive. Hou Hong Liang, chairman of Chinese television production company Daylight Entertainment revealed his amazement at meeting African fans of Chinese television stars in a recent trip to the continent, even as he bemoaned the lower profitability of the region. “We had African fans coming to the airport to meet the cast for one of our recent productions. I was amazed to see we had fans in Africa. I thought they wouldn’t understand our culture, but they did. I don’t think Africa is a true market yet, our IP is not valued as much. We have to nurture the audience, so we sell our IP at a lower price to African broadcasters.”

Disney has released a new teaser trailer for its upcoming adaptation of Gene Luen Yang’s American Born Chinese starring Everything Everywhere All At Once‘s Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan and Stephanie Hsu.The teaser trailer focuses on Yeoh’s character warning that a “gate between Heaven and Earth is opening” with the fate of the world “hanging in balance.” The trailer also shows glimpses of several multiverse settings as well as Ke Huy Quan’s and Stephanie Hsu’s characters.American Born Chinese is set to arrive in Disney+ beginning May 24. Based on Gene Luen Yang’s 2006 graphic novel the same name, the series will tell the story of a teenager named Ben/Jin Wang who struggles as a Chinese immigrant in an American high school.Upon meeting a fellow foreign exchange student Wei-Chen, the two become embroiled in a historical battle of Chinese mythological gods, with themes of identity, culture and family woven in.Jin Wang will be played by young star Ben/Jin Wang, while his fellow exchange student Wei-Chen is played by Jim Liu.

While Disney+ has teased that the coming-of-age series jumps between action and comedy as it explores themes of identity, culture and family, Yeoh and Quan try their hand at multiverse jumping once more as the pair transport across space and time and fight the forces that threaten the world.Besides “Everything Everywhere All At Once” royalty, the comedy-action series features an ensemble including Ben Wang, Yeo Yann Yann, Chin Han, Daniel Wu, Jimmy Liu and Sydney Taylor.Hailing from 20th Television, Kelvin Yu serves as executive producer and showrunner while “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” director Destin Daniel Cretton will direct and executive produce alongside Melvin Mar and Jake Kasdan, Erin O’Malley, Asher Goldstein and author Gene Luen Yang.  You can watch the teaser above.“American Born Chinese” will premiere May 24 on Disney+.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Hong Kong-based indie sales agent Autumn Sun comes to FilMart with a bulging slate of new film titles from around Asia — including two animated features from mainland China. Autumn Sun, headed by sales veteran Elliot Tong, is giving a market premiere to “Planet Cat,” an animated feature by Song Yuefeng (“Ping Pong Rabbit,” “Throne of Elves”) about a chance meeting between a stray cat and a girl in a city at night. The film is produced by Nuctopus Studio and Dreamers Studio and previously won a development prize at the Beijing International Film Festival. The feature is now in post-production and a promo reel is being screened at the market.

EXCLUSIVE: Conqueror Entertainment, the L.A. and Beijing-based production outfit launched by former Legendary Entertainment executive Vasco Xu, has set a Chinese-language adaptation of leading sci-fi author Liu Cixin’s Supernova Era as one of it first projects. 

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Cyber Heist,” a crime thriller directed by Hong Kong’s Wong Hing-fan (“I’m Livin’ It”) and scripted by Soi Cheang (aka Cheang Pou Soi), took the top spot at the mainland Chinese box office over the weekend. It earned a very modest $6.2 million, according to data from consultancy Artisan Gateway. But that was enough to win on the quietest weekend since January’s Lunar New Year holiday season. “Cyber Heist” stars Aaron Kwok as a cyber security engineer who develops a state-of-the-art firewall that is capable of fending off online attacks against the global financial system. But he does not realize that in doing so he has stepped into a minefield that is even more dangerous. The picture also stars Lam Ka-tun and Simon Yam.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Sculptor turned director Wu Lang made a splash at the Berlin Film Festival with his debut feature “Absence” playing in the festival’s showcase Encounters section. With a high-profile cast headed by Lee Kang-sheng (“What Time Is It There?” “The Wayward Cloud”) and Li Meng (“The Bad Kids,” “The Guillotines”) “Absence” is an art-house romance that uses skyscapes and urban landscapes as metaphors for inner feelings. The seduction starts with a man’s return to Hainan Island after ten years in jail and ends with a flock of sheep in an abandoned construction site. Wu: Shooting the first short film for me had two purposes. First, making a film is not easy in terms of financing and finding coproducers. So, first I wanted to make a short in order to get myself started.

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Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief China-based video streamer iQiyi achieved a surge in paying subscriptions and achieved net profits in the fourth quarter of 2022. While still loss-making over the full year, the company hailed its turnaround as “miraculous.” In the October-December period, gross revenues were RMB7.6 billion ($1.1 billion), representing a 3% increase year over year, the company said in a regulatory filing. Net income attributable to iQiyi was RMB304 million ($44.1 million), compared to a net loss of RMB1.8 billion in the same period in 2021. Over the course of the full 2022, total revenues were RMB29.0 billion ($4.2 billion), representing a 5% decrease from 2021. Net losses decreased from RMB6.2 billion to RMB136 million ($19.7 million).

Lise Pedersen The Copenhagen Intl. Documentary Film Festival, also known as CPH:DOX, has unveiled the full program of its 20th edition, which includes 200 new films, more than half of which are world premieres, sealing CPH:DOX’s reputation as one of the leading events of its kind in Europe. For the first time, all 13 films competing for the top Dox:Award are world premieres. These include “A Storm Foretold,” the long-awaited doc on Donald Trump’s former adviser Roger Stone by Danish political journalist Christopher Guldbrandsen; established filmmaker Margreth Olin’s highly anticipated epic film “Songs of the Earth”; “A Tiger in Paradise,” a surreal journey into Swedish singer José González’ inner world by Ruben Östlund’s regular creative partners Mikel Cee Karlsson and Erik Hemmendorff; and “Total Trust” by Jialing Zhang (“One Child Nation”), described as “the first major film about the Chinese surveillance state (…) – a disturbing tale of technology, (self-) censorship and abuse of power in the 21st century.”

Willem Dafoe gets a dream role with Inside, a combo of art film in more ways than one, psychological thriller, heist movie, and survival tale all rolled into one in which Dafoe’s Nemo is center stage, alone, the entire time.

From “Rosa Luxemburg” in 1986 to 2012’s “Hannah Arendt,” the films of Margarethe Von Trotta, an icon of the New German cinema, have put strong female protagonists center-stage in renditions of German history. For her latest, Von Trotta paints a portrait of German poet Ingeborg Bachmann, author of essays, radio dramas, and opera libretti.