The 47th Hong Kong International Film Festival (HKIFF47) is proud to have a glittering jury line-up for its Firebird Awards competition, renowned for recognising emerging cinematic talents and celebrating the most exciting, innovative new films, including documentaries and short films.
Tasked with selecting 12 winners for this year’s competition, four independent jury panels will evaluate 42 short-listed films in four sections based on their creativity, technical skills, and artistry. HKIFF47 will announce the results in the Awards Gala at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre on 9 April.
Three notable filmmakers – two directors and a film editor – will adjudicate Firebird Awards’ Young Cinema Competition for Chinese language films, now entering its fifth year. Hsu Hsiao-Ming is renowned for his directorial debut, Dust of Angels, which closed the Director’s Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival in 1992. Zhang Lu, the director of Grain in Ear (2005) and Gyeongju (2014), has recently competed in Berlinale with The Shadowless Tower, one of the many highlights of HKIFF47. Paris-based Mary Stephen is best known as the film editor for French New Wave auteur Eric Rohmer for over 20 years.
The jury panel for the Firebird Award Young Cinema Competition for World Cinema will consist of three distinguished industry professionals. On board is Ann Hui, the first-ever female director to receive the Golden Lion Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2020 Venice Film Festival, whose latest lyrical documentary, Elegies, will be one of HKIFF47’s two opening films. Joining Hui on the panel are French film critic Emmanuel Burdeau, a former editor-in-chief for Cahiers du Cinema, and Hong Kong-based film critic and programmer Clarence Tsui.
British director and producer Malcolm Clarke, an Academy & Emmy Awards winner, is on the panel to choose the winners of a Firebird Award and a Jury Prize in the Documentary Competition. Hong Kong-based German documentary filmmaker Uli Gaulke and Chinese director and contemporary artist Qiu Jiongjiong, whose first fiction feature, A New Old Play (2021), won HKIFF46’s Young Cinema (Chinese Language) Firebird Award and the FIPRESCI Prize, will join Clarke on the panel.
Entrusted with the responsibility of selecting two notable works from 18 contestants in the Short Film Competition are three pre-eminent jury members: local writer-director Jun Li, acclaimed for his award-winning Drifting (2021); veteran film executive Esther Yeung; and Ariel Esteban Cayer, a Montreal-born writer and programmer based in Hong Kong.
The Firebird Awards Competition is part of the hybrid HKIFF47, which will take place from 30 March to 10 April featuring screenings and audience-engagement events in theatres and online. The complete programme and screening schedule are now available through HKIFF’s official website (www.hkiff.org.hk). The public can purchase tickets through the official website and URBTIX.
To download more information:
https://usercontent.hkiff.org.hk/Press/HKIFF47
