Taipei Film Festival Is The First Of It’s Kind Since Pandemic

While most film festivals were cancelled this year, Taipei becomes the first to take place in person since the COVID-19 outbreak.

The Taipei Film Festival began on Thursday, being crowned the first film festival to take place in person since the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered prominent events like the South By Southwest, Tribeca, and Cannes festivals. One major difference at the Taipei Film Festival, as opposed to how it was pre-pandemic, is no international guests.

“I think we are really lucky to have such an environment where we’re able to have this kind of event in this kind of unprecedented time,” Taipei’s senior program assistant manager Stephanie Su told Variety. “We want audiences and filmmakers from other countries to not give up the hope and just keep doing what they can.”

With three venues and six screens, the film festival will feature 142 films across it’s June 25 through July 11 time frame. The festival is also continuing to host awards; the Taipei Film Awards that focus on local productions and the more broad-scoped International New Talent Competition.

Another alteration was that Taipei downsized it’s number of selected films, but increased the amount of screenings for each and doubled the length of the festival from one week to two. Despite these changes, organizers expect the usual attendee count to grow from 43,000 to 50,000, and 19 films sold out in the first day of ticket sales while last year that number was four. The festival typically sees between 50 to 100 international attendees, but are doing without abroad guests this year given Taiwan’s COVID-19 prevention measures of barring most foreign travelers’ entry.

To browse the films that are playing at Taipei Film Festival throughout the next two weeks, head to the website here.

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