– The upcoming film by the Chinese director will be co-produced by the French-German channel, as will the second feature by Kira Kovalenko and the debut film by Shengze Zhu
Director Diao Yinan
The third 2026 selection committee of Arte France Cinéma (headed up by Olivier Père) has decided to commit to co-producing and pre-purchasing three projects.
Standing out among them is Red Snow by China’s Diao Yinan, the fifth feature by the filmmaker, who rose to fame in competition at IFFR in 2004 with Uniform before presenting Night Train in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard in 2007, then scooping the Golden Bear at Berlin in 2014 with Black Coal, Thin Ice and taking part in the Official Competition at Cannes in 2019 with The Wild Goose Lake. His new opus, the shoot for which will wrap in October, will be a film noir rooted in modern-day China. As for the plot: Lin Feng’s wife is brutally murdered on their wedding night in the midst of winter. As the police inquiries seem to lead nowhere, Lin Feng decides to carry out his own investigation, which will soon put him on the trail of an elusive and methodical serial killer. Production duties are entrusted to French outfit Memento.
Arte France Cinéma will also be backing Heavens Don’t Care by Russia’s Kira Kovalenko, who won the Un Certain Regard Prize at Cannes in 2021 with her feature debut, Unclenching the Fists. Set to shoot next autumn, her second feature will revolve around a family living in Yerevan, whom we observe amidst festivities and work, and moments of joy and melancholy interspersed with minor disasters, while daily life unfolds in all its stillness and fragility. Production duties are handled by French outfit Why Not Productions, with Belgium’s Les Films du Fleuve and Armenia’s Visan Cultural Center on board as co-producers.
Also among the chosen few is a feature-debut project: A Distant House Smokes on the Horizon by China’s Shengze Zhu. Set to shoot this summer, the movie is set in a small town in China during a sweltering summer’s day. Far from the hustle and bustle of the big cities, where everything seems rigid and unyielding, three teenagers who have dropped out of school wander around aimlessly. Overwhelmed by their own problems, they hatch a plan to flee their home town. The production is being staged by Chinese-US company Burn The Film together with French firm 4 à 4 Productions.
As a reminder, Arte France Cinéma is also supporting the upcoming movies by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Albert Serra, Kaouther Ben Hania, Bertrand Bonello, Kornél Mundruczó, Mikhaël Hers, Sergei Loznitsa, Hlynur Pálmason, Mia Hansen-Løve, Robert Guédiguian, Yann Gonzalez, Anne Fontaine, Élise Girard, Sébastien Lifshitz, Justyna Tafel, Chabname Zaria, Hu Wei, Vincent Le Port, Wesley Rodrigues, Masha Kondakova, Charlotte Le Bon, Philippe Lesage, Stéphanie Argerich, Kateryna Gornostai, Diana Cam Van Nguyen, Iryna Tsilyk, Jérémie Hoarau, Fabrice Lung-Vija, and duo Romain Renard and Fursy Teyssier.
(Translated from French)
