From April 16 to 23, the Beijing International Film Festival, hereby known as BIFF, is bustin’ out all over town. BIFF -- much like its namesake, the bully from Back To The Future -- is muscling up as an industry event with a big co-production market, all-the-stops-pulled-out red carpets, and myriad events to encourage the kind of palm-greasing that future blockbusters are made of. Serving a city hungry for a more robust film culture, BIFF’s rather copious program of second-run mainstream hits, random classics, and a solid roster of international favorites is a rare treat of global cinema offerings and sparks hope for a bigger and badder BIFF in years to come. With dozens upon dozens of Chinese and international films at over twenty-two venues around town, there’s something for everyone. Let’s get down to it:

Programming

The dizzying spread of film programs include such categories as “Essence of Franchise Films” (thoughtfully incorporating a high/low program of Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise trilogy, all the The Godfathers, and a bunch of Marvel Superhero movies that I wasn't aware were serialized); “National Charm,” or Unclassifiable, But Mostly European Films From the Past Forty Years; and “Tech Spectacles,” which seems to mostly be nature documentaries. There’s also a big focus on Korean Ko-productions (their words, not mine) and the Korean VFX industry.

Luc Besson FTW!

French director Luc Besson heads the BIFF Jury, alongside Hong Kong director Peter Chan, Kim Ki-duk (i.e. the South Korean director of Pieta, one of the freakiest films in recent history), actress Zhou Xun of Suzhou River, Cloud Atlas, and being-on-the-cover-of-every-Chinese-magazine-ever fame, and the dude who wrote Taken. Solid. In honor of Luc Besson, the man who brought you over-sexualized preteen Natalie Portman in Léon and post-post-human Scarlet Johannsson in Lucy, a number of his films will screen in a special retrospective. Highlights include The Fifth Element, which is of course set in New York in the year 2259 and features Gary Oldman's finest hairdo to date.

BIFF Selections Also Coming Soon To An Airplane Near You

Such as Wild, featuring Reese Witherspoon hiking while sad! Such as Gone Girl, in which something bad happens to a crazy woman, but a worse thing happens to Ben Affleck! Such as Wolf Totem, in which Feng Shao Feng is the foxiest (wolfiest?) shepherd on the silver screen since Heath Ledger! Such as Birdman, or the Unexpected virtue of (Winning a Bunch of Oscars and having all your screenings sell out in ten seconds) Ignorance.

Deep Cuts

Director Ana Lily Amirpour shot straight to indie darling status when her debut feature, a genre-bending Iranian “vampire Western,” premiered to raves at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. It’s the slinky, allusive, stylish vampire movie you didn’t know you were waiting for because, ya know, vampire fatigue. Miss Granny (重返20岁) I must have missed this one when it opened in China in January. A remake of a 2014 Korean film, the title of which translates to “Suspicious Girl,” the summary is pretty straightforward: “A 70-year old woman living unhappily with her son’s family is magically restored to her beauty of 50 years earlier. Complications ensue.” Typically, I prefer “hijinks” to “complications,” but you can’t have everything. Crossroads (十字街头） This historically significant 1937 masterpiece of Shanghai cinema bizarrely works as a slapsticky romantic-comedy that also lays bare the heavy dystopian anonymity of early-century urbanization and makes serious overtures to the coming Sino-Japanese war. Featured in the "Restoration of Classics" program, I can only hope this refers to a print remaster, but certainly worth seeing on a big screen regardless. God Help The Girl Helmed by Belle & Sebastian front-man Stuart Murdoch, I imagine God Help The Girl to be much like a Belle & Sebastian song, which is to say Scottish-ly whimsical, swishily poetic, and very, very emotional for teenagers. Also playing is a French film called Belle et Sébastien, the band's namesake and apparently spun off a beloved French children's series. One two twee go! The Look of Silence The sequel to Joshua Oppenhemier's brutal and audacious 2012 doc, The Act of Killing, which investigates the Indonesian genocide of 1965-6 though a haunting cinematic retelling by the very men who proudly murdered thousands in the name of machismo, movement, and a "new order" coup. With support from Werner Herzog and Errol Morris, The Look of Silence promises to continue this intense meditation on the banality of evil and the wounds times leaves behind. * Also worth mentioning: White God, the Hungarian canine uprising allegory that won big at Cannes in 2014; Oscar-nominated Russian opus Leviathan; A Touch of Zen screening in the "Homage to Masters" program will be awesome on a big screen; Krzysztof Kieslowski's early-career masterworks, Blind Chance (1987) and A Short Film About Killing (1988); a Russian animated film called Space Dogs: Adventure to the Moon. *** So, there you have the dog’s breakfast of film programming, 2015 edition. See you at the Tongzhou Multiplex!

To Purchase Tickets

1.) Go on Gewara.com or download the Gewara app and select your tickets! Act now! Limited offer! Time is running out! 2.) There’s a list of other ticket vendors on the BIFF website such as mtime and Weixin Dianying Piao *** The Beijing International Film Festival runs at venues all over town from April 16 to 23.