Photo: Courtesy of organizers

Online ticket sales for over 300 films from around the world, set to be screened at the 15th Beijing International Film Festival from April 18 to 27, officially launched on Monday, igniting excitement among film enthusiasts. Within seconds of going on sale, tickets for several highly anticipated films were sold out. 

According to data from Maoyan, the official ticketing platform of the film festival, within two hours of ticket sales opening, movies such as Red Rose White Rose, Let the Bullets Fly, and The Turin Horse were among the fastest to sell out. Unlike previous years, a subsidy of 5 million yuan ($685,673) has been made available to moviegoers during the film festival. Meanwhile, the number of local film fans in Beijing has increased by 2.7 percent compared to the previous year's event. 

Once she discovered they were sold out, Meng Yu, a 31-year-old movie enthusiast from Beijing, quickly began searching for and exchanging tickets for films like the 1995 romantic drama Before Sunrise and the 1993 epic historical drama Farewell My Concubine, both of which she was eager to see at the festival. She shared with the Global Times that before the event's opening, online chat groups had been created on social media platforms, including Douban, to facilitate ticket exchanges among film lovers.

To cope with the ticket rush, Meng started researching the screening schedules almost a week in advance. She and other film fans even divided tasks among themselves, with multiple people simultaneously trying to purchase tickets for different screenings. 

There will be about 900 screenings of over 300 films at 33 cinemas in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region during this film festival, significantly surpassing previous years in both the number of films showcased and the scale of screenings. These selections underscore the diversity and inclusiveness of the Chinese film market, as reflected in the featured films and competition sections. For instance, the "Forward Future" competition section, which highlights emerging directors and their works, includes entries from a wide range of countries, such as the Dominican Republic, Kenya, Iran, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Panama, the UK, Canada, Austria, Japan, and more.

The intense competition for tickets at the Beijing International Film Festival reflects Chinese film enthusiasts' demand for high-quality content. The prosperity of the event is underpinned by the ongoing development of the Chinese film industry, Sun Jiashan, an associate researcher at the Central Academy of Culture and Tourism Administration, told the Global Times on Monday.

As of Saturday, China's total box office revenue for 2025 has exceeded 25 billion yuan ($3.4 billion), solidifying its status as one of the highest-grossing film markets in the world. Globally, animated blockbuster Ne Zha 2, which has already grossed over 15.6 billion yuan, has become the highest-grossing animated movie in history and currently ranks as the fifth highest-grossing film ever at the global box office.

"The passion of film fans reflects the vitality of the Chinese film industry, but this energy needs to be further harnessed through diversity, creativity and a stable market supply. Moving forward, the industry should prioritize content innovation, genre diversity, and international collaboration to meet the rising cultural demand and shift from a box office-driven approach to a content-driven one," Zhang Peng, a film researcher and associate professor at Nanjing Normal University, told the Global Times.