Shanghai: „Atlantic Rhapsody” Wins the Golden Goblet
Zhong Kaifeng's Chinese debut was named best film at the 28th Shanghai festival, while Morocco's „Halima” took best director and best actress and returned Morocco to the main competition after 27 years.
- The Golden Goblet ceremony was held on June 20, closing the 28th edition of the Shanghai festival.
- Best film went to „Atlantic Rhapsody” by Zhong Kaifeng, which also took the cinematography prize.
- Morocco's „Halima” won best director and best actress, returning Morocco to the main competition after 27 years.
- The Jury Grand Prix went to Belgium's „Iluminada” by Nicolas Rincon Gille.
A jury chaired by Tony Leung handed its top prize to a debut feature, and that rarely passes without a quiet stir in the room. Zhong Kaifeng’s „Atlantic Rhapsody” is not a film that announces itself loudly; it narrates patiently, building atmosphere before it makes a move, and it is precisely this lack of hurry that Shanghai seems to have read as maturity. The festival’s highest honor, the Golden Goblet, went last night to a filmmaker only now stepping into the feature form.
If best film can be read as a choice inclined toward the continuity of domestic cinema, the rest of the winners’ list tells a far more open story. The cinematography prize also went to „Atlantic Rhapsody,” firmly positioning the title as the most formally complete proposition in the competition. Yet a festival is remembered not only for who carries the main trophy, but for who returns to a stage they had long been absent from.
Why does „Halima” resonate beyond its prize?
Yassine El Idrissi’s Moroccan film „Halima” took two awards that are hard to separate from one another: best director and best actress. Khadija Amari was named best actress, and when a director’s vision and a performer’s presence are recognized together, it usually means the film was built from the inside, around the character rather than the plot. El Idrissi is honored here not for spectacle but for work on detail, the kind of attention that does not advertise itself.
The significance of that win goes beyond a single title. „Halima” marks Morocco’s return to Shanghai’s main competition after 27 years, and figures like that are not merely statistics; they measure how long it takes for a national cinema to win back a seat at the table of the major festivals. The festival circuit, that unwritten web of programming decisions and geographic balances, shifted this time toward North Africa, not as a gesture but as the outcome of a competition.
What does the winners’ list say about the jury’s taste?
A look at the remaining awards reveals a jury inclined toward variety rather than a single aesthetic. The Jury Grand Prix went to Belgium’s „Iluminada” by Nicolas Rincon Gille, while best actor went to Zhang Songwen in „Secret in the Box.” The map of winners thus stretches across three continents, from China through Belgium to Morocco, an arrangement that feels deliberate, almost a statement about what the festival wants to be.
Shanghai has spent years trying to be more than a regional showcase, and this year’s list serves that ambition. When the main trophy goes to a debutant, when one national cinema returns after nearly three decades, and when acting prizes land at addresses audiences outside the festival halls have yet to discover, you get an edition that risks being more interesting than the predictable kind. The question every festival leaves behind remains: how many of these titles will actually reach cinemas, and how many will stay winners we met only through a list of awards?
