The veteran Chinese actor-director, best known to Hollywood as Baze Malbus in ‘Rogue One,’ will preside over the jury that hands out the event’s prestigious Golden Goblet Award.
Chinese actor-director Jiang Wen will preside over the main competition jury at the upcoming Shanghai International Film Festival. The festival unveiled Jiang’s appointment Monday, saying that additional jury members would be announced soon.
Jiang has been a pillar of the Chinese film industry since the 1980s. His international breakthrough as an actor came in 1987, thanks to his performance opposite Gong Li in Zhang Yimou’s Red Sorghum, which won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. He made his directorial debut in 1993 with In the Heat of the Sun, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival, winning its lead the best actor prize. His second feature, Devils on the Doorstep, a WWII drama set during the Japanese occupation of China, won the Cannes Grand Prix in 2000.
Over the past half decade, Jiang has become known to a new generation of international filmgoers thanks to more commercial moviemaking. His action comedies Let the Bullets Fly (2010) and Gone with the Bullets (2014) were big domestic hits, and his key supporting role as Baze Malbus in Lucas Film’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) made him recognizable worldwide.
No stranger to the festival circuit, Jiang served on the juries of the Moscow International Film Festival in 2001 and the Venice Film Festival in 2013.
Founded in 1993, the Shanghai event is China’s most established international film festival. Previous jury presidents include Danny Boyle, Luc Besson, Barry Levinson, Tom Hooper, John Woo and Jean-Jacques Annaud.
The 21st edition of the Shanghai International Film Festival runs June 16-25.
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