The film call report for the 8th Hainan Island International Film Festival was released: 4,632 films were registered, a record high

China News Service, Sanya, September 30 (Zhang Yuehe) The Hainan Island International Film Festival Organizing Committee released the film call report for the 8th Hainan Island International Film Festival on the evening of the 29th. It showed that since the global call for films from August 18 to September 24, the organizing committee has received a total of 4,632 film applications, covering 133 countries and regions. The number of films and country-region data have reached record highs.

Among the registered films, there are 824 feature films, 374 documentary films, and 3,434 short films; the films involve 135 languages ​​and dialects, covering five continents. China, Iran, India, Spain, Russia and Brazil are the most active sources of videos.

On the evening of December 3, 2025, the opening ceremony of the 7th Hainan Island International Film Festival was held in Sanya. The picture shows the scene of the opening ceremony. Photo by China News Service reporter Luo Yunfei

Cross-regional cooperation has become an important feature of this year's film competition. About 8.8% of the films were jointly produced by two or more countries or regions; more than half of the films involved Asian countries and regions. The themes of plot, society, family, suspense, comedy, youth, love and so on are intertwined and presented.

Behind the works are a more diverse group of creators. First-time creators accounted for 33.1%, and student works accounted for 25.7%. Among directors whose birth year can be confirmed, creators born in the 1990s and younger accounted for 57.7%. More than one-third of female creators are making films for the first time, and a group of new female creators are taking the first step in film creation. Doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers, journalists, dancers, athletes, scholars, game developers and other cross-border practitioners use their unique perceptions to make the expression of the film extremely broad.

The film selection team of the film festival stated that the number and overall quality of the films submitted this year have maintained a high level, and creators from different countries and regions have presented a rich and diverse creative outlook. It continues the Hainan Island International Film Festival's consistent focus on pioneering expressions and focusing on young creators in film selection. This year’s film selection will continue to be based on film art itself, focusing on works with distinctive authorial styles, innovative consciousness and realistic concerns, and discovering more cutting-edge works with exploratory spirit and creative potential from the aspects of image expression and narrative methods, and further expanding the global vision of the film festival through continuous international film selection and exchanges. (over)