This year, the Shanghai International Film Festival venture capital project received 380 valid project proposals.

Among these, 330 were scripts submitted for youth director projects and works-in progress, as well as international collaborations.

The international collaborations included entries from Germany, Iceland and Italy, along with the usual participants, United States, Japan and France.

Thirty-four projects were selected from this large pool for further development. Eight of these projects were youth director projects; three were international collaborations projects; thirteen were creative projects; and ten were production projects.

Many appointments were already booked before the festival even began.

So far, 661 sessions of negotiation have been held.

The Best Talent Project Award was given to the film “A Girl Unknown” at the awards ceremony on Wednesday. It tells the story about a girl’s growth from 6 to 18 years old, living with three families and having different names assigned by each.

The Most Creative Project was awarded to “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints,” a movie about the dilemma of modernity as seen by a couple in their middle age.

The Jury’s Choice went to the magically realism-infused film “Cold Water”, a suspense film.

The venture capital initiative is supported by partners such as FunAge Pictures, Alibaba Pictures Dirty Monkeys Mofei Pictures Image Forestt Aputure INBETWEEN and Phenom Films.

They offer special awards to the films and provide equipment, post-production, and poster design service as well as substantial bonuses. This is done to encourage and support the ongoing development of the project.

Simultaneously the annual training camp for the project, launched in 2017 but upgraded in 2019, runs twice a years in summer and winter.

Every year, 20 emerging film-makers are selected for an extensive program that connects with the venture capital platform. This creates a progressive system to nurture talent and incubate projects.

This year’s venture-capital training camp attracted a total of 331 applicants. The same diverse backgrounds as in previous years were maintained.

Some applicants came from the fields of law, science, business, design and animation.

After rigorous initial evaluations and secondary evaluations 20 students were selected for this transformative program.