Movie buffs snap up tickets for film festival

Tickets for the 20th Shanghai International Film Festival were being snapped up yesterday — with some buyers willing to queue for up to 36 hours to get the tickets they wanted.

All the tickets, most of them priced from 40 to 60 yuan (US$8.80), went on sale at 8am yesterday.

Movie buffs were quick off the mark to buy them.

They did so online via dianying.taobao.com, mobile phone or by waiting in long queues to buy tickets at downtown cinemas, such as the Shanghai Film Art Center and Peace Cinema.

The film fest runs from Saturday to June 26 at 45 cinemas around the city.

More than 500 movies will be shown. They include classic films and recent productions from all over the world.

Last year the festival’s box office totaled more than 20 million yuan, making it the world’s highest grossing film festival.

CFP

More than 353,000 tickets were reported to have been sold by 6pm last night. Tickets for many screenings were sold out online and at the cinemas within an hour.

Officials said that “early birds” had waited overnight and for up to 36 hours at Shanghai Film Art Center to snap up tickets of their favorite screenings.

The organizing committee is considering adding a few more screenings, and information on this will be released on the festival’s Weibo and WeChat accounts.

Popular screenings include the Japanese romance film “Hirugao,” Romanian award-winning drama film “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,” and the world’s first fully painted feature film “Loving Vincent.”

Other films in demand are the documentary film “Florence and the Uffizi Gallery,” David Lynch’s surreal horror film “Eraserhead,” and the American crime film “Pulp Fiction.”

Zhang Yingjie, a public relations manager and movie fan, bought tickets for the Disney animated classics “The Lion King” and “Fantasia,” as well as Mel Gibson’s epic movie “Braveheart.”

“Every year I attend about five to eight film screenings at the festival,” Zhang said.