• Academy Award and Golden Globe winner Nicolas Cage takes up the role of Talent Ambassador for the 3rd IFFAM (Photo courtesy of IFFAM Organising Committee)
  • Multiple Golden Horse Award winner Aaron Kwok has been confirmed as one of the Festival’s Talent Ambassadors (Photo courtesy of IFFAM Organising Committee)
  • World famous Chinese director Chen Kaige will serve as an International Competition Jury President for the 3rd IFFAM (Photo courtesy of IFFAM Organising Committee)

Nicolas Cage Confirmed as 3rd IFFAM Talent Ambassador

LISTEN STOP Your browser does not support this feature

The 3rd International Film Festival & Awards.Macao (IFFAM) will take place in Macao Cultural Centre from 8th to 14th December, with the Organising Committee announcing Academy Award and Golden Globe winner Nicolas Cage as another of this year's Talent Ambassadors. Nicolas Cage joins Hong Kong star Aaron Kwok, who was announced earlier this as an IFFAM Talent Ambassador. With these two superstars teaming up for IFFAM, the Festival's ambition to bring local and international industry professionals together is evident, highlighting, in turn, Macao's famed East-meets-West culture, while exposing local audiences to the best of international cinema.

More international stars, outstanding movies

Nicolas Cage is an actor whose remarkable versatility has led to great success across various genres over three decades, bringing him much acclaim for his acting in multiple blockbuster movies. He will be presented at the IFFAM Opening Ceremony on 8th December, and participate in a Master Class on 9th December. Mandy, one of Cage's latest works, will feature in the IFFAM Flying Daggers section.

Fellow Talent Ambassador Aaron Kwok - best known for his consecutive Golden Horse Awards for Best Leading Actor for Divergence and After this Our Exile and winning the Hong Kong Film Award for Best Actor for Port of Call - has expressed his wish that his role in IFFAM can encourage more cinemaphiles, emerging filmmakers and aspirants to participate in the Festival.

Meanwhile, world famous Chinese director Chen Kaige will serve as International Competition Jury President for the 3rd IFFAM.

New Chinese Cinema

Continuing the theme of 'A New Avenue to the World of Films', IFFAM has announced a new competitive section titled New Chinese Cinema, which has partnered with Screen International in this section. New Chinese Cinema will feature six Chinese language films, overseen by a jury of three accomplished international industry professionals who will present an IFFAM award for Best Film in New Chinese Cinema. Director Shu Kei (Hong Kong), film critic Nick James (UK) and arts writer Stephanie Bunbury (Australia) are the inaugural jury members.

IFFAM Artistic Director Mike Goodridge remarked that IFFAM has so many international industry and media guests that it is an opportunity to screen some of the year's best to audiences. And in a venue in which the global film industry has the opportunity to be introduced to the most exciting contemporary Chinese-language directors.

Defining essence of East-meets-West

Other IFFAM programmes comprise the following:

Competition - An international competition comprising a maximum of twelve feature films will be mounted to serve as a showcase for first and second-time filmmakers. Winning entries will be selected by five to seven judges, with US$60000 offered as the award-winning prize.

Gala - In this section a maximum of six mainstream crowd-pleasing films will be presented.

New Chinese Cinema - In this brand new category four to six films representing the programming team's choice of the best of Chinese language cinema first screened in 2018 will be presented.

Flying Daggers - The format for this non-competitive sector is the selection of international genre films.

Best of Fest Panorama - This non-competitive format selects films from other major international film festivals of the year.

Director's Choice (Retrospective) - Comprising a non-competitive mix of six classic genre films selected by six renowned directors, three films from Asia will be selected by non-Asian directors, while three films from the rest of the world will be selected by Asian directors.

In Focus (Retrospective) - This section serves as a celebration of one or two specific outstanding talents to be invited from a field of directors, actors, actresses, writers, directors of photography, production designers, producers, composers, editors and so forth with screenings of their films and on-stage interviews.

Special Presentations - For this section, screenings of films will be at the discretion of the Artistic Director and Jury President related to special guest attendance and lifetime achievement honorees.

For All the Family - This limited collection of films will be selected to appeal to a wide family audience.

For more information about the 3rd IFFAM, please visit: www.iffamacao.com.