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.”

The continued blurring of the lines between film festivals and tech showcases has been witnessed in Shanghai across the past week, as panels, screenings and assorted displays of where the film industry stands and where it may be headed played out in real time.

The scene was set during an opening press conference for the Shanghai International Film Festival’s (SIFF) main Golden Goblet Awards jury, when actress Xin Zhilei was asked how she had prepared for the role and laughed that she had consulted the Chinese AI app Doubao for all the advice she needed. It was a line that brought the house down, capturing both how rapidly the technology has risen and how ubiquitous its embrace has become in these parts.

China puts the value of its core AI industry at some $174 billion, with film — and the wider umbrella term “content” — taking a decent whack out of that thanks mainly to the growing use of AI in short dramas and animation.

There were a few SIFF initiatives this year that took innovative and insightful approaches to the rise of AI and its impact on cinema. Chief among them was the AI Backlot program — partnered with Hailuo AI (MiniMax) — which paired a traditional filmmaker with one from the AI side of the industry and tasked them with producing an AI short over a month, while recording the whole experience.

Instead of tucking them away to do their work, SIFF converted a vast exhibition room at the Shanghai Film Art Center into a live “open set” studio where — gaming style — the filmmakers could be watched at their consoles as they worked, while huge screens also broadcast their work as it was being developed.

Chinese filmmaker Hou Zuxin (The Italian Recipe) was paired with German AI filmmaker Mark Wachholz, and the two produced the AI-driven short A Message for the Butterfly — a lushly realized philosophical musing on memory that Wachholz described as a “documentary of ideas,” noting that AI is “very good at representing or visualizing abstract ideas.”

“Our entire process is very relaxed,” explained Hou, who admitted to being initially curious about AI in terms of creativity and pure economics. “We were on the same page immediately. I told him I was a traditional filmmaker but I hoped that one day AI could help me create a scene or a small teaser that can let others know what my thoughts are and what my vision is. This work allowed me to make a whole film, and it was an exciting and eye-opening experience, like I entered a whole new world.”

By now a little more traditional, in filmmaking terms, but still charting a course no less innovative, was the SIFF ING program’s mobile filmmaking camp.

Driven by a need to explore “new technologies, new perspectives, and new youth” — and as a quite brilliant way to showcase iPhone filmmaking advances — the camp of 10 young talents was mentored by cinematographer Gao Weizhe (Black Dog), actor Qu Chuxiao (The Wandering Earth) and director Nick Cheuk (Time Still Turns the Pages), who also found time to make their own shorts.

The young filmmakers were handed an iPhone, funding and guidance from those mentors — and they dabbled in everything from sci-fi (Stray Chen’s Till Death) to pure romance (Harry Cai’s Amour).

The influence of the iPhone’s growing reach in filmmaking circles was recently to the fore in Taiwanese director Shih-Ching Tsou’s Left-Handed Girl (2025), where it was used with great effect, especially to capture scenes shot in and around a bustling Taipei night market. Gao’s own Boxed Mom showed its use for more intimate settings, with his quite superb and emotionally fraught look at the domestic relationship between an aging woman and her daughter.

“I wanted to use this technology to make something that feels very personal because that’s what these phones are — personal,” said Gao.

And let’s not forget developments in virtual reality (VR) — almost pushed to the position of a forgotten rural relative, what with all the focus these days on AI. But the Chinese government is eyeing the possibilities of a $48 billion market, by this year’s estimates alone.

On the sidelines here in Shanghai there was a SIFF Immersive section that explored VR advances and offered attendees a choice of a live concert performance by Jason Zhang, shot and formatted for VR, and a more immersive experience with the screening of The Crafted Crime Cases, which — headsets secured — offered viewers a chance to engage and even help investigate some of history’s most intriguing murder cases, including those of Lizzie Borden and Hollywood’s infamous Wonderland Murders.

“Virtual reality films are transitioning from a novelty experience to a more scaled production and distribution system, which is a significant benefit for the industry,” explained Peng Qijun of the VR firm Shengshi Wanhua Cultural Technology, who was on hand to introduce the screenings in Shanghai. “These films allow each viewer to experience their own screen, creating a personalized space that offers audiences a new experience of stepping into the movie and exploring the viewing process.”

With the United States’ 250th birthday, the documentary filmmakers of Declarations: Black Americans and the Revolutionary War turned to modern technology to reclaim history.

Director Stacey Holman and her co-writer/fellow director Maya Tepler explained why chose to use generative AI to “give our historical subjects agency” and how they hope this documentary, premiering June 29 at 10pm ET on PBS, “will serve as a blueprint” for how to responsibly use the technology.

“How do you create a historical documentary centered on the disenfranchised, disregarded, and decentered? As documentary filmmakers, our options have always been limited,” they wrote in an essay for PBS. “The typical route has been archival materials. Archive is often a primary visual tool, but in the case of storytelling centered on historical Black narratives, archive is both limited and limiting.

“Portrayals of Black-centered narratives in early American art are few and far between. And the ones that do exist were faceless in fields, or caricatured — displayed as subservient property. In Declarations: Black Americans and the Revolutionary War, we knew we wanted to give our historical subjects agency on visual terms, as never seen before. In doing so, we aim to be a part of a long lineage of artists reclaiming and reshaping Black narratives,” Holman and Tepler added.

Declarations: Black Americans and the Revolutionary War follows the stories of four Black Americans as they navigate our country’s fight for independence and their individual pursuits of freedom, including James Lafayette, Harry Washington, Elizabeth Freeman and Abraham Peyton Skipwith.

Noting they “wanted to have animations” and “explore new technology to help us bring these stories to life,” Holman and Tepler enlisted artist and researcher Hudson Campbell, who made oil paintings of four historical subjects “rooted in accurate historical context” and “based on actual portraiture.”

“He then used AI tools to animate these portraits, preserving his artistic style while bringing the characters to life,” they explained. “Even for the animations and still images that do not feature the faces of our historical subjects, with time, the programs our animator used generated imagery centered on his own style and artistic vision.”

Campbell’s work was proved by the doc’s creative team and expert historical advisors: Colonial Williamsburg historical re-enactor and staff member Stephen Seals, professor and National Humanities Medal recipient Dr. Ed Ayers, and Oscar-nominated and Emmy-award-winning doc filmmaker Sam Pollard.

“We hope that this work will serve as a blueprint for how to use generative AI as a tool, while still being artist-centric, historically accurate, and in line with ethical storytelling practices,” added Holman and Tepler.

Declarations is not the first historical documentary on the Revolutionary War to use genAI, after Darren Aronofsky’s AI studio Primordial Soup and Time Magazine released the animated short-form series On This Day… 1776 in January via YouTube