In less than three weeks, the 14th FIRST Youth Film Exhibition is about to open in Xining, which will be the first batch of film festivals held in China after the outbreak of the new pneumonia. Right now, Song Wenzheng, the founder of the festival, and his team are preparing for the final stage. In order for the film festival to open smoothly, they have been fighting for several months.

　　A week ago, FIRST Youth Film Exhibition announced the finalists of this year's competition. This year's competition unit received a total of 895 films for registration, and finally there were 643 valid films for the judging process. After maintaining the trend of increasing the number of deliveries for several years, some domestic films have decreased by 36% this year from last year, and for the first time in five years, they have fallen below 700. "There are many types of films for this year's registration competition, and there are many films about soft science fiction and crime. In addition, under the background of the epidemic, many films are focusing on individuals, such as focusing on the theme of family and love. There are many more this year. The film is very experimental. In fact, we hope to see the works of young directors being able to balance genre experimentation and personal expression", Song Wen said.

　　Exposed together with the finalists, there is also a jury lineup for the competition unit. The festival continues the tradition of taking into account multiple positions and perspectives. Director Chen Kexin is the chairman. The jury members include artist Cao Fei, actor Hao Lei, editing director Kong Jinlei, screenwriter Liu Heng, director Zhang Ming, and voice director Zhao Nan.

　　The film screening has always been a highlight of the FIRST film exhibition, but under the situation of epidemic prevention and control, this year's screening faces some uncertainties. "We will continue to open-air screenings, and due to the impact of the epidemic, we are considering expanding the scale of open-air screenings. Of course, we will also increase our efforts in epidemic prevention and control to ensure that the audience can watch the film in an open and safe environment." Song The article said that FIRST will strictly abide by the principles of epidemic prevention and control, do a good job of prevention and control measures, reserve necessary materials for events during the exhibition in advance, and formulate strict emergency countermeasures to provide audiences with safe social distance activities.

　　Affected by the epidemic, the domestic film industry has been shut down. Song Wen confessed that at the beginning, the organizing committee thought that in this case, the screenwriter would have more time to create, and the film and television venture will also receive more scripts. "But the actual situation is that the number of scripts is decreasing. We think that the epidemic may still affect everyone's creative achievements." However, it is worth mentioning that the number of people who have signed up for FIRST training camp this year has increased a lot. More than 500 people have signed up. These new filmmakers with dreams hope to greatly enhance their creative ability through the training camp organized by the festival.

　　In Song Wen's view, FIRST Film Festival can first connect film resources for young directors. On the other hand, the film market organized by the film festival can serve as a bridge, allowing creators and investors to have close contact and exchanges through this platform. Direct the director to the market.

　　This year is the 14th FIRST Film Festival. As the person in charge of the film festival operation, Song Wen believes that developing new audiences is always the mission of FIRST. The film festival hopes to grow with the audience and cultivate the fun of interpreting the film together. In the future, FIRST will further enrich the content by establishing parallel film festivals, such as the addition of science fiction/animation type film festivals, etc., to meet the needs of the audience and the market. FIRST will further enhance film education, such as expanding the scale of training camps and exploring offline film education models. Our reporter Yuan Yun'er