Movie fans scramble for tickets for 27th Shanghai Int'l Film Festival

Tickets for screenings at the upcoming 27th Shanghai International Film Festival (SIFF) have been snapped up by cinephiles as the sales officially started on Thursday.

This highly anticipated event for movie fans will run from June 13 to 22, with more than 400 films from 71 countries and regions to be showed at around 1,500 screenings in 48 cinemas across the Yangtze River Delta. About 30 percent of the films will be exhibited in 4K version.

The tickets went on sale at 12:00 on Thursday on the online platforms Damai and Taopiaopiao. Within the first hour, all the seats for 92 films and over 600 screenings were sold out.

The offline box office of the SIFF opened two hours later.

Many enthusiastic movie buffs went to the authorized cinemas to pick up the physical tickets they had purchased for the film festival in person.

"I originally planned to watch eight films, but I managed to get tickets for seven of them. The result is quite satisfactory after all," said He Beibei, a movie fan.

"I scrambled to buy about five tickets today. I specifically chose the Dolby screening rooms because I thought they had a great effect and a better atmosphere," said another film fan, Wang Yicong.

The organizer said that this year's SIFF will have more detailed screening programs, allowing movie buffs to experience the charm of diverse cultures through light and shadow.

"This year is a special year as it marks the 120th anniversary of the birth of Chinese cinema, so I would like to recommend the section titled 'Resonance: A Brief Encounter of Chinese and World Cinema.' We have selected some classic Chinese and foreign films of the same type, or the same theme, or the same genre during the same time period, so as to present a cross-temporal and spatial dialogue on the screen," said Chen Guo, director of the Shanghai International Film and TV Festival Center.

Some authorized cinemas have cooperated with surrounding business districts to launch promotional activities, offering discounts on dining, sightseeing and hotels to SIFF ticket holders.

"A ticket stub can help enhance the all-round experience of food, accommodation, transportation, sightseeing, shopping and entertainment. Of course, we also hope to create a vibrant festival atmosphere in the city with everyone participating and light and shadow showing everywhere," said Chen.

Movie fans scramble for tickets for 27th Shanghai Int'l Film Festival

The death toll from a landfill collapse in the central Philippine city of Cebu has risen to eight by Monday morning as search and rescue operations continued for another 28 missing people.

The landfill collapse occurred on Thursday as dozens of sanitation workers were working at the site. The disaster has already caused injuries of 18 people.

Family members of the missing people said the rescue progress is slow, and the hope for the survival of their loved ones is fading.

"For me, maybe I’ve accepted the worst result already because the garbage is poisonous and yesterday, it was raining very hard the whole day. Maybe they’ve been poisoned. For us, alive or dead, I hope we can get their bodies out of the garbage rubble," said Maria Kareen Rubin, a family member of a victim.

Families have set up camps on high ground near the landfill, awaiting news of their relatives. Some people at the site said cries for help could still be heard hours after the landfill collapsed, but these voices gradually faded away.

Bienvenido Ranido, who lost his wife in the disaster, said he can't believe all that happened.

"After they gave my wife oxygen, my kids and I were expecting that she would be saved that night because she was still alive. But the night came and till the next morning, they didn't manage to save her," he said.

Death toll in central Philippine landfill collapse rises to eight