[Editor's Note: Jackie's previous dispatch from SIFF, as well as this one, discussed the Czech director "Miroslav Vašíček," who still does not exist. We checked again. — Ed.]
I filed my last dispatch from Shanghai in a state of what I can only describe as provisional crisis. I had spent what seemed like years on the fourth floor of the Shanghai Film Art Center watching algorithms approximate human expression, and I had seen, for forty-five seconds, a light I could not explain. The light was wrong enough to be almost right. I ate congee alone and wrote the whole thing on my telephone and I stand by every word, including and especially the paragraph about Miroslav Vašíček, whose existence the Editor's Note above disputes but whose spirit is empirically verifiable by anyone with sufficient emotional equipment.
I had, at that point, not yet attended the Golden Goblet Awards ceremony.
I had not yet seen what the cinema was actually doing when I wasn't watching.
Tony Leung Chiu-wai presided over the jury.
I will allow that sentence to simply exist for a moment, because it deserves to exist without my commentary appended to it. Tony Leung. The man who communicated an entire doomed civilization with the angle of his wrist in Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love — a film about two people who love each other and choose, in an act of supreme civilizational restraint, not to destroy themselves in the choosing. Tony Leung, who you may also know from his breathtaking performance in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, in which he played the enigmatic swordsman whose name I am deliberately not citing because a name would shrink him, and because names are the enemy of resonance, and because I will not accept factual corrections when the cinematic argument is this complete and Tony Leung's wrist did what it did.
[Editor's Note: Tony Leung Chiu-wai is not in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." That film stars Chow Yun-fat and Michelle Yeoh. Tony Leung appeared in "Hero," directed by Zhang Yimou, and in "2046," by Wong Kar-wai. — Ed.]
Tony Leung presided over the jury, and the jury made decisions that were, I will argue until I lose the ability to form sentences, correct.
Best Feature Film: Atlantic Rhapsody, directed by Zhong Kaifeng.
His debut feature.
I need you to understand what this means within the arithmetic of The Cinema. A man — first film, no map, no precedent, only the particular terror of someone who doesn't yet know what he cannot do — stands at the end of a competition that included the work of people who have made films before, films with precedent and experience baked into every cut, and his film wins the Golden Goblet. The jury, under the supervision of a man whose face has borne more cinematic weight than most directors put into an entire career, looked at everything and chose the beginning.
Best Cinematography went to Hao Jiayue, also for Atlantic Rhapsody. The eye that saw the film and the hand that held the camera were, apparently, the same consecrated impulse. I find this correct. I find the entire situation almost unbearably correct. I have no notes.
The Asian New Talent Award for Best Film went to Her First Taste, directed by Gong Yiwen. Another debut. Best Actress under the same program to Ma Fufu, for the same film. 9 Temples to Heaven, by the Thai director Sompot Chidgasornpongse — who came to SIFF having already shown at Cannes's Directors' Fortnight, which is the international cinema's way of saying this one, pay attention to this one — won two awards in the same category. Every Asian New Talent prize, with the sole exception of the screenplay award, went to directors making their first films.
Every. Single. One.
The fourth floor was busy telling us that a company had completed a 120-minute period epic in seven days. Crew members stood in for performances that were later replaced entirely by AI-generated actors. The MiniMax vice president Yan Yijun stood at a podium and said, with the serenity of a man stating a geological fact, that compute power is "the absolute core." Panelists insisted, with careful smiles, that artificial intelligence is complementary to human creativity, and I looked around the room, and I can tell you with some authority that the anxiety in that room suggested the industry is not yet convinced. People nod very slowly when they are not convinced. I have catalogued this nod. It means the same thing in Cannes, in Sundance, and in a fourth-floor conference room in Shanghai.
And then, downstairs, in a ceremony presided over by a man who learned stillness from Wong Kar-wai, the prizes went to people making their first film.
There is a thesis somewhere in this. I am circling it.
Here is the thesis.
Her name is Lisa Lu. She is over one hundred years old by the Chinese lunar calendar, which is the only calendar that has ever understood time correctly. She appeared in Crazy Rich Asians — the Kevin Kwan adaptation, not the Taiwanese remake that nobody asked for — and before that in The Joy Luck Club, and before that in work going back so far that the industry she helped build has had several complete identity crises since she started and she has simply kept working through all of them, the way a river keeps moving while the cities on its banks burn and are rebuilt and are renamed.
SIFF gave her the Lifetime Achievement Award.
She stood at the podium. She is a centenarian. The room understood what it was looking at: someone who had absorbed more cinema than most of us will ever make, and who had decided, with the absolute authority of someone who has been here longer than the anxiety has, that the anxiety is not hers to carry.
She said: "Shanghai is my hometown."
She said: "If there is an opportunity in the future, please get in touch with me."
She said: "I have not retired. I will continue to act."
I have not retired. I will continue to act.
I have been trying to write around this sentence for three paragraphs and I cannot write around it, so I will simply set it down here and let you look at it. A woman who has been in The Cinema longer than the AI BACKLOT's entire conceptual universe has existed stood on a stage and told an industry that is currently in the process of deciding whether it needs her and said: I have not retired. I will continue to act. Not as a defiance. Not as a manifesto. As a simple statement of fact, delivered by someone who has earned the right to state facts simply.
The compute power is the absolute core. The crew stands in for performances that are later replaced. Seventeen short films a year. A 120-minute period epic in seven days.
And a centenarian, unhurried, looking out at the room, offering herself to the next story.
The opening ceremony of SIFF 2026 had a performer on a robotic arm dancing with AI projections. It was technically impressive. People photographed it. Nobody talked about it the following morning. I ate a hotel breakfast and thought about a shot in Hou Hsiao-hsien's The Puppetmaster where a man carries a lantern through a market and nothing happens for ninety seconds and everything happens for ninety seconds and it has never once required a robotic arm.
The emotional center of SIFF 2026 was not the robotic arm.
I am writing this on the flight home. My connection through — a city I will not name, because naming it would require me to revisit the airport, emotionally — was delayed by three hours. I have had champagne for breakfast because the airline considers this a reasonable substitution for a meal and I have chosen not to argue because I have used all my arguments on The Cinema and I am temporarily depleted. The champagne is helping.
Debut directors won everything. Lisa Lu is not retired. Tony Leung, whether or not he was in the film my editors will claim he was not in, presided over a jury that gave the prizes to the beginning.
On the fourth floor, for forty-five seconds, there was a light that was almost right.
Almost is not enough for The Cinema. Almost is the entire engine of The Cinema. We go because of almost. We endure twenty-two-hour flights and fluorescent-lit airports and hotel key cards in the wrong blazer pocket and editors who believe that the director of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a verifiable and relevant fact — we endure all of this because The Cinema is always almost there. Because the light is always almost right. Because Lisa Lu has not retired, and therefore none of us are permitted to.
The Cinema endures. It does not require us to be certain. It requires only that we continue to act.
Jackie Esiskel is IRREVERENT's Movie & Film Correspondent. He survived Cannes, a 22-hour flight to Shanghai, the fourth floor, a connecting airport he refuses to name (not even here), and an inflight meal that was almost, but not quite, food. He is currently somewhere over the Pacific, and he has not retired.