Pingyao Turns 10, a New Indian Festival Launches, and Singapore Digs Into Taiwanese Cinema History
The Pingyao International Film Festival will hold its 10th edition from 24 to 30 September at the Pingyao Festival Palace in Shanxi Province, founder Jia Zhangke's modestly scaled showcase reaching a decade marker that past editions have signposted with celebratory plans (Variety; Screen Daily).
Pingyao runs four programmes: Screening, Market, Cultivation and Academics. The Screening slate splits into Crouching Tigers, for emerging directors' first, second or third features; Hidden Dragons, for Chinese-language filmmakers at a similar career stage; and Galas, which carries major works and festival prizewinners. Films in Crouching Tigers and Hidden Dragons compete for two juries' worth of hardware — the Roberto Rossellini Awards and the Fei Mu Awards. The Fei Mu Best Film prize carries RMB 1 million (about $140,000); Best Director takes RMB 200,000 (about $28,000) (Variety).
The festival has served as an early platform for directors who later broke through internationally, among them Chloé Zhao, Wei Shujun and Liu Jian. Pingyao's 10th edition is set to screen 51 films, including 17 world premieres and 11 Asian premieres (Screen Daily). The festival has also been in talks with the Hong Kong International Film Festival about a joint collaboration beginning in 2026 (Deadline).
Two other Asian festival stories are moving at the same time. India's Madhya Pradesh state will host the inaugural People's International Film Festival of India, or PIFFI, from 17 to 20 December at Rabindra Bhawan in Bhopal. The four-day competitive event screens features, shorts, documentaries and AI-assisted films, alongside masterclasses, panel discussions and a closing awards gala. Filmmaker Anwar Jamal serves as festival director; critic Saibal Chatterjee heads programming; Ruchi Vijayvargia chairs the organising committee. The advisory board includes directors Adoor Gopalakrishnan and Sudhir Mishra, and former FTII director Tripurari Sharan. PIFFI is organised by the People's Art, Culture and Education Foundation (Variety).
And in Singapore, the Singapore Film Society, Asian Film Archive and Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute will present "Treasured Legacy: Celebrating 70 Years of Taiyupian" from 4 to 6 September at the Oldham Theatre. The programme will screen five newly restored classics spoken in Taiwanese Hokkien and the Amoy dialect: Zhang Di Seeks A-Zu, Good Neighbors, The Rice Dumpling Vendors, Romance at Lungshan Temple and Taming of the Princess. A free public talk on Amoy-dialect cinema will accompany the screenings (Variety).
What gives these three stories a common thread is a shared instinct to build infrastructure for cinema that might otherwise sit at the margins — emerging Chinese-language directors, AI-assisted Indian filmmaking, dialect-cinema restoration in Southeast Asia. Each is a bet that a well-programmed week can redirect attention toward work that the larger market tends to overlook.
