North America Chinese Directors Short Film Tour

Initiated by EnMaze Pictures, the 2nd North America Chinese Directors Short Film Tour is so far the only program with a mission of discovering emerging Chinese filmmakers trained in North America.

In 2016, the Organizing Committee of the Short Film Tour received 561 submissions from filmmakers all around North America. These filmmakers have received training at top institutes including American Film Institute, New York Film Academy, University of Southern California, Columbia University, and Ryerson University among others.

22 films were selected as finalists by the jury consisting of acclaimed filmmakers and producers like Terence Chang Chia-Chen, Wuershan, Mabel Cheung, and Jeffrey Sharp. The official selections include 1 musical, 3 documentaries, 4 animated films and 14 narrative dramas, as well as touch upon a wide variety of themes ranging from social commentary, historical events, relationships, and emotions, to magic adventures, etc. Through these films, the young generation of filmmakers clearly demonstrate their skillful grasp of visual storytelling and deeper understanding of underlying cultural themes. From October to December 2016, with directors in attendance, the Second Short Film Tour screened the officially selected 22 films in 10 cities in US and China, including New York, Washington D.C., Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Shanghai, Xian, Chongqing, Wuhan, and Beijing.

Our film tour has been a great platform for young directors to break into the film industry. In 2014, we successfully held the first North America Chinese Directors Short Film Tour which helped a number of young directors kick-start their careers. Their films resonated with audiences around the globe and met with raving reviews. The massive view hits those films generated attracted the attention from film studios which offered sizable budget to some young filmmakers for their directorial debuts. So far four directors from the first tour have already finished their feature-length films and been regarded as the rising stars in China's already booming film industry (China's "film brats", as some newspapers even call them).