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Just a day before its scheduled China debut, director Lou Ye’s latest film, “Saturday Fiction,” has been pulled from its slot as the opener of the mainland’s Golden Rooster Film Festival because of unspecified “internal production problems,” according to Chinese film website Mtime. Speculation has been spreading online that it will also be yanked from its currently scheduled Dec. 7 nationwide theatrical release.

The film by Chinese “Sixth Generation” director Lou competed for the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in September. It has been replaced on opening night of the Golden Rooster festival by an innocuous music documentary about shakuhachi – long, traditional bamboo flutes that originated from China and spread to Japan – called “One Sound, One Life.” Directed by Helen Yu, the film grossed just $500,000 in mainland theaters in May.

“Saturday Fiction” is now at least the fifth Chinese film to run into trouble this year at...

Chinese actor Zu Feng makes a professional, polished but overly cautious directorial debut with “Summer of Changsha,” a dour police procedural wrapped around an even more dour romance that seems to exist to make the point that no good deed goes unpunished in our modern, alienated world. Trapped in a muddy, deterministic plot, hurting, guilt-ridden characters bond tenuously while a seasonal heat wave makes everyone torpid and irritable, and generally no one seems to have much fun, least of all the audience. There’s certainly room, in this year’s Asia-noir-heavy Cannes slate, for a Chinese genre film that skews gritty, but there’s gritty and there’s just plain grim, and then, further along that spectrum there’s “Summer of Changsha.”

Framed in Dp Jeffrey Chu’s tasteful but anonymous medium shots, and accompanied by Dong Yingda’s muted score, one bright spot, or more accurately a dully glinting one,...

The tug of war between filmmakers and producers on one side and the Chinese censors on the other reached surreal levels this year. After Zhang Yimou’s long-awaited One Second, set during the Cultural Revolution, and Derek Kwok-cheung Tsang’s Better Days, a drama about disaffected youth, were pulled from the Berlinale at the last minute, citing “technical issues” as the reason, it was the turn of first-time director Zu Feng and his chaste debut feature Summer of Changsha (Liu Yu Tian) to be mysteriously yanked from Cannes. In the end, the film was screened in Un Certain Regard but sans cast and ...

The tug of war between filmmakers and producers on one side and the Chinese censors on the other reached surreal levels this year. After Zhang Yimou’s long-awaited One Second, set during the Cultural Revolution, and Derek Kwok-cheung Tsang’s Better Days, a drama about disaffected youth, were pulled from the Berlinale at the last minute, citing “technical issues” as the reason, it was the turn of first-time director Zu Feng and his chaste debut feature Summer of Changsha (Liu Yu Tian) to be mysteriously yanked from Cannes. In the end, the film was screened in Un Certain Regard but sans cast and ...

Chinese crime drama “Summer of Changsha” screened at the Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard section despite lacking the necessary approvals from China’s censors. It premiered without its director or creative team in attendance, who blamed “technical reasons” for their absence — marking the third time that Chinese censorship appears to have caused a disruption at a major international festival this year.

The film played to full theaters on the Croisette Wednesday and Thursday, but without the required “dragon seal” that indicates it has been approved by Chinese authorities. Movies lacking the seal cannot be released theatrically in China, and, since a recent tightening of restrictions, also increasingly cannot be screened abroad at festivals. Titles bound for overseas festivals now also need an additional travel permit that, once issued, means that a film’s length and dialogue cannot be changed and no new investors can come on.

At noon on Tuesday,...

Chinese producer, Li Rui (“The Sword Identity”) says that good films need to explore the connections between religion, souls, and human nature.

In his “Summer of Changsha,” when a detective and a surgeon get together on a murder case, crime solving is not the only thing on their minds. There is love, guilt, and more philosophical questions about redemption, and the afterlife.

A new trailer for the film, which premieres at the Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard section, appears to show a distraught woman reduced to tears by a gruesome murder. But all may not be as it seems.

The story of “Changsha” could have taken place anywhere in the world, says actor, performance coach, and first-time feature director Zu Feng. Its questions about the past, future and the ability to live in the present would have remained the same.

The film was indeed shot in the central Chinese city of Changsha,...

Indie Sales has announced a slew of major deals on Matteo Rovere’s ambitious Italian epic film “Romulus & Remus: The First King” in the run-up to Cannes, where the movie will have a market screening.

The film is based on the legend of Romulus and Remus, twin brothers and shepherds who lived in peace near the Tiber river and embarked on an incredible journey to found Rome. “Romulus & Remus: The First King” is headlined by Italian star Alessandro Borghi (“Suburra”) and shot in Proto-Italic language, the ancestor of Latin.

The Paris-based sales company has sold the film in North America (WellGo USA), Germany and Austria (Capelight), Spain (Mediaset), Switzerland (Pathé), South Korea (Kth), Poland (Wistech Media), Czech Republic and Slovakia (Cinemart).

“’The First King’ is an intense action epic in the hands of a cinematic auteur that takes the founding of Rome out of legend and grounds it in history,...

Paris-based company Indie Sales has acquired Chinese actor-turned-director Zu Feng’s feature debut “Summer of Changsha” which will world premiere at Cannes in Un Certain Regard and will vie for the Camera d’Or award.

A popular Chinese actor, Feng previously starred in Lou Ye’s “Mystery” which played at Cannes in 2012 and in the TV series “Lurk.”

The crime film stars Feng as A Bin, a police detective in Changsha, who meets a mysterious female surgeon, Li Xue, during the investigation of a bizarre murder case. As they get to know each other, A Bin falls for Li Xue, while both are struggling with their own love stories and sins. The film was produced by Rui Li from Gootime Media Co.

“Summer of Changsha” marks Indie Sales’s first acquisition of a Chinese film, said Simon Gabriele, Indie Sales acquisitions and sales manager.

“We’ve always been attentive observers...