Seeking expansion

With the Chinese movie market's robust recovery boosted by the Lunar New Year box-office bonanza earlier this year, a lot of filmmakers and insiders attending the festival say they have felt the domestic industry is back to making money.

"In this season of rejuvenation, China's movie market is truly feeling the arrival of spring," says Sun Xianghui, head of China Film Archive. "Starting from Spring Festival, movies of different genres and from various countries are being shown across Chinese cinemas, just like bamboo roots shooting up from the ground."

As of Monday, a total of 150 movies have been released in China this year, attracting more than 380 million moviegoers to the theaters, and earning a whopping 17.7 billion yuan ($2.56 billion) at the box office. This inspirational figure exceeds the amount from the same period last year, according to the archive.

Coupled with international exchanges becoming easier due to the lifting of pandemic-control measures, the long-standing aspiration of expanding Chinese movies overseas to attract more foreign audiences has once again become a widely debated topic during the festival.

Earlier this year, the Spring Festival blockbusters — The Wandering Earth II, Hidden Blade and Full River Red — have been successively released in multiple markets from North America to Europe.