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Parallax China, one of China’s leading independent film sales companies, has picked up rights to a pair of titles that debut this week at the Shanghai International Film Festival.

It is handling world sales on “Qian Tang River,” directed by Wan Bo, and “Another Day of Hope,” by Liu Taifeng. Both are directorial debuts and both appear in the non-competitive Refreshing Chinese Cinema section.

Set in the 1950s at a site on the Qiantang River, which is notorious for its dangerous tides, “Qian Tang River,” chronicles three generations of a family, their beliefs, battles and failures. The cast isheaded by Wang Zheng, Chen Yunong, Liu Lu, Wang Yidi and Yao Anlian. Production of the Liu Yiying and Wan-scripted drama is by Gao Yujie. Cinematography is by Zhang Xing.

“Another Day of Hope” sees the mundane life of Wen Li shattered by an accident. Until then, he had been...

For the last few months, trades, outlets, brands across the world have all wanted their slice of discourse in the marketing and publicity heaven that is Greta Gerwig's “Barbie” (2023). For a website dedicated to Asian cinema, it might be argued that this smidge of pie was not ours to claim. Yet as I sat through its credits, celebrating our collective womanhood, a film by Lee Sang-Woo came to mind. 11 years ago, in another “Barbie” (2012), then-child actress Kim Sae-Ron quipped, “A pretty and skinny person like (Barbie) doesn't exist. If she does, then she must be an alien.”

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Alien, meaning someone not of this planet, or perhaps, someone not of this country. Lee Sang-Woo's “Barbie” once illuminated an uncomfortable truth: the Eurocentrism of Barbie, and at larger value, the Eurocentrism of many American owned megacorporations that purport themselves to be global,...

It's ironic that the most iconic social realist films: “Children of Heaven”, “Umberto D.” and “Factory Boss”, often contend with the most impossible situations. In Zhang Wei's near decade-old treatise on China's manufacturing boom, toy manufacturer Lin Dalin (Yao Anlian) fights tooth and nail to complete a final order that might save his factory from financial collapse. In the week that follows, long drawn repercussions of unethical labor, workplace abuse and exploitative business deals mount on him. Bearing a core goal to humanize, “Factory Boss” portrays a flawed system through the very people within it, who must play their part in order to survive.

Factory Boss is screening at New York Asian Film Festival

With the urgency of a thriller, we open to a burning truck. A warning sign from factory workers to our protagonist, Dalin, that he had better pay up months of overdue wages. Traversing from luxury office to downbeat factory,...