Chinese filmmaker Zhong Kaifeng formally introduced himself to the world at the Shanghai International Film Festival on Saturday night, picking up the main Golden Goblet award for his debut, Atlantic Rhapsody.

For the Golden Goblet jury — led by Hong Kong star Tony Leung Chiu-wai — the film is a “uniquely compelling visual experience.” For the 29-year-old Zhong, the story of a young man from northern China searching for meaning in life is a sign.

“I want to say that Atlantic is not a definition, it does not provide answers — but today it seems to have given me an answer, and that answer is to persist, to love, to work hard, and then to believe,” he said.

And for SIFF itself, the win was a fitting end to a festival that set out with the aim of putting young talent front and center. Zhong’s work is a case in point, a film the jury said “captivated and impressed” them with its “bold experimental approach [that] explores the absurdity of human life” — and the festival will hope it has unearthed a new voice in Chinese cinema. Another exciting emerging talent was fittingly revealed in SIFF’s Asian New Talent awards, too, when first-timer Gong Yiwen won for her heartwarming coming-of-age drama Her First Taste, a film that emerged from the SIFF Project initiative for young filmmakers.

“The film’s patient observation and sensitivity to the textures of ordinary life announce a new exciting voice in Asian cinema,” the Asian New Talent jury said. “Her First Taste is a memorable work about young love and coming of age, balancing emotional restraint with deep resonance, and marking Gong Yiwen as a filmmaker of great promise.”

The focus at SIFF this year has been on young filmmakers, with both a heavy presence of emerging talent from China and the region across the screenings and an emphasis on the support the festival has offered them through initiatives such as the SIFF ING Young Filmmakers Program and the SIFF YOUNG × Shanghai Young Filmmakers Support Program, with Joan Chen and Wen Muye acting as mentors.

The festival counts 78 productions that have found cinema release after being nurtured across these programs over previous years. Several titles that came through the SIFF Project initiative also feature in this year’s lineup: Wan Bo’s suspense-filled drama Strangers in the Mountain, selected in the Asian New Talent competition, along with the Peng Chen- and Xu Wei-directed Desert Beneath the Ocean and Kangdrun’s Linka Linka, both elsewhere in the program.

Saturday night started the winding down of SIFF’s 10-day stretch, which on opening night had given fans a fix of stars both global and local — among them Leung and Michelle Yeoh, here also to promote her latest film, This Is My Time, her first Chinese-language production in nearly a decade, following her best actress Oscar for Everything Everywhere All at Once — along with jury members Guan Hu and Xin Zhilei.

There were touching tributes to industry veterans Lisa Lu (Crazy Rich Asians) — 100 years old by the local calendar, still shining brightly on the red carpet as she appeared to accept a lifetime achievement award — and director Zhang Yimou, who picked up an award for his “outstanding” contribution to Chinese cinema.

Still to come are screenings of the winners and an assortment of other titles, along with the closing film, Zhang Disha’s The Decisive Moment, which makes its world premiere in Shanghai on Sunday. When the curtain comes down tonight, the official tally will be around 1,600 screenings of some 420 films across the city and others in the surrounding Yangtze River Delta region.

There were sold-out screenings of hits from international festivals, including Cannes (Pawel Pawlikowski’s Fatherland), and palpable delight among film fans of all ages at some of the retrospectives — such as those devoted to the works of Ken Loach, Billy Wilder and Marilyn Monroe — which offered a rare chance to see international classics on the big screen in all their 4K-rendered glory.

The diversity of the movies on show — and the audiences’ reaction — was highlighted best by Moroccan Yassine El Idrissi, who picked up the Golden Goblet for best director for his wonderfully humorous take on a lady who refuses to give in to age or circumstance — Halima. “It proves that we are all the same,” he said. “We just need some translation.”

Also on the purely industry side of things, there was no escaping the lurking presence of artificial intelligence, with a series of panels bringing together industry heavyweights to discuss the various pros and cons. While several talks focused specifically on AI — with titles like “Smart Tech, Immersive Worlds, the Next Film Revolution” and “When AI Learns to Create, What Grounds Cinema” — the subject trickled into almost every panel.

But SIFF also looked to provide working — often live — examples of what the technology can do, in an effort, we can suppose, to clear up some of the confusion about what it can actually do. The AI Backlot initiative paired traditional filmmakers with AI upstarts and tasked them with making a short film in a month — while setting them up like gamers so that people could watch how they went about their work. Chinese filmmaker Hou Zuxin was part of that program and walked away saying it was “like I entered a whole new world.”

Festival head Chen Guo, managing director of the Shanghai International Film & TV Events Center, said ahead of the big night that, though “reluctant to see the festival come to an end,” she felt the 28th edition had achieved its mission of “aligning global and domestic resources” and “building industrial pathways to bring projects to fruition.”

“The global film industry remains in a prolonged period of adjustment, and creators are in growing need of encouragement,” she said. “As one of the most prominent film festivals in Asia, SIFF holds special significance this year by providing spiritual support and renewed confidence for Chinese-language filmmakers. Here, they witness the dedication of their peers and the breakthroughs of emerging talents, sustaining their creative passion through diverse films and sincere exchanges.

“We hope this year’s festival also gives global industry a closer look at what drives these filmmakers — their creative convictions and their long-term vision for Chinese films. And we hope it leads to more lasting, win-win partnerships across borders.”

There had to be so much whirling around in Tony Leung Chiu-wai’s mind as the Shanghai International Film Festival (SIFF) was drawing to a close.

Important decisions were pending in his role as the jury head for the event’s main Golden Goblet competition, and there was a masterclass full of hungry young minds, ready to hang on his every word, scheduled for that very afternoon.

Then there was the effect of the constant and inescapable noise being generated in and around the festival all week long about factors affecting the very future of the film industry — chief among them the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) and falling global box-office returns.

But what the Hong Kong star does when he sits down to chat is exactly what he’s been doing across a career that now spans over four decades. Leung delivers.

First, and unprompted, Leung sound-checks the recording equipment for the video crew who’ve joined us to make sure everything is running smoothly, and then he eases back into a conversation that covers all those issues, and more.

So let’s start with the industry-focused aspects of the discussion, because at this year’s SIFF there has been a stream of AI-focused seminars dissecting the pros and cons of these technological advances — and their impact on the film industry.

“I think AI is a double-edged sword,” he says. “It saves us a lot of time on pre-production and post-production. It saves a lot of money but this will go to mainstream movies, the popcorn ones — because [AI filmmaking] is easier and saves money. But at the same time, a lot of people have lost their jobs. You don’t need to think. There’s no creativity. It’s just calculations … there’s no soul.”

These are issues — and challenges — the industry will continue to face, says Leung, along with how to attract a rising generation for whom film is not the only entertainment option, as it was for him growing up in the Hong Kong of the 1970s, when there seemed to be a cinema down every street.

“When I was a kid, I enjoyed that kind of theatrical experiences. That, to me, is movies,” says Leung. “You have to watch it in a big screen. If not, you will miss a lot of film language, a lot of details. So when I was a kid, I used to watch a movie in a big cinema with a big screen, and this was just good.”

Leung has so far resisted the temptations of content offered on smaller devices — “I don’t even watch movies at home,” he says — and saw his masterclass as an opportunity to reach a younger audience in Shanghai, with a sold-out screening of his latest feature — the distinctly arthouse musing of Hungarian director Ildikó Enyedi’s Silent Friend — set to precede the session.

“We need to educate them on how to enjoy different types of movies, not just one template,” he says. “It’s not just enjoyment, but sometimes [movies] don’t have an answer for you and you have to try to figure it out yourself. That’s why we need different kinds of movies. I think smaller-scale productions will dominate the market because of so many challenges — the short-form videos, the streaming, the gaming, and all other entertainment. The new generation, they have never had a theatrical experience so you have to find a way to invite these young kids to go to cinema.”

For the past week, Leung has led a jury of directors Guan Hu, Aktan Arym Kubat, Déa Kulumbegashvili and Fernanda Valadez, producer Dora Bouchoucha and actress Xin Zhilei.

They have watched, and discussed, and judged the relative merits of 12 films from a combined 15 countries and territories.

“It’s been a very interesting experience,” says Leung. “To me it’s a learning process because I can hear [the jurors’] opinions, and it’s very subjective. There are a lot of different perspectives, so it’s fun. I think you need surprises from movies and of course the film can resonate across our whole team, but all of us agree we can enjoy a movie in a different way.”

In terms of his own career — one that started with Hong Kong’s domestic TVB channel and has since moved through action classics (Infernal Affairs) and a brilliant spell under the gaze of auteur Wong Kar-wai (Happy Together, In the Mood for Love) and on to Hollywood (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings) — Leung seems genuinely thrilled and inspired by the move into European arthouse circles with Enyedi.

“It was chaos,” he laughs, of his experience making a movie about the life of a ginkgo tree and the people who come into contact with it. “I really enjoyed working with such a mini crew. We found a harmony, like dancing together. You don’t know what we are going to do next. It’s really, really interesting and inspiring.”

Ahead awaits a previously announced project with fellow Hong Kong veteran Johnnie To, a return to his roots (of sorts) in a Hong Kong series made for a streamer, and more work with Enyedi, he says. There’s even the suspicion of a twinkle in his eye when offering a “maybe,” and a pause, to a question about the possibilities of a reunion with Wong.

“I choose the director first,” says Leung. “What kind of story, what genre, is not important to me. I need to have some feelings for this person or love their movies or I love this person but I never plan because I don’t want to control something that I can’t control because that’s life — it won’t happen as you wish.”