Film fest tickets snapped up movie buffs

Tickets for the 21st Shanghai International Film Festival have been snatched up by movie buffs through mobile phones starting 8am on Saturday.

A total of 52,894 tickets had been sold by quick fingers within one minute when the online selling started at 8am. Tickets for many screenings have been sold out online within an hour.

By 6pm on June 9, the festival had sold a total of 387,077 tickets. In addition to movie buffs in the city, Film Panorama also attracted a lot of users in the neighboring Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces to buy tickets online.

For the first time the ticket selling on dianying.taobao.com began two hours earlier than that at the cinemas around the city. Alipay also provides easy ticket purchasing for cellphone users.

Some elderly and middle-aged people chose to buy tickets at downtown cinemas, where ticket selling started at 10am. Though they got up early, they found that tickets for many screenings had already been sold out by online users.

"I am not good at mobile stuff," said a woman in her 60s, surnamed Ye. "I should have asked my daughter for help to buy the tickets online."

The film festival will run from June 16 to 25. Around 500 movies from home and abroad will be screened at 45 local cinemas including the Shanghai Film Art Center, Grand Cinema and Cathay Theater.

Among the popular screenings are French filmmaker Agnes Varda's new documentary film "Visages Villages," Palme d'Or-winning Japanese film "Shoplifters," a restored 4K edition of Alfred Hitchcock's thriller "Rebecca."