CONCERNS about the outbreak of MERS in South Korea and the removal of a Japanese film put a bit of a damper on the 18th Shanghai International Film Festival, which has earned a reputation for catering to movie fans and opened Saturday night.

    “Attack on Titan,” an animated Japanese film, was pulled from the lineup and replaced with another Japanese movie. The film was among 38 foreign animated properties deemed excessively violent or pornographic last week by China’s Ministry of Culture.

    Unlike last year, when “Transformers: Age of Extinction” closed out the Shanghai festival, this year’s lineup includes no Hollywood blockbusters, though Antoine Fuqua’s long-in-the-works boxing drama “Southpaw,” starring Jake Gyllenhaal, is having its world premiere at the festival.

    The opening film was “I Am Somebody,” directed by Derek Tung-Sing Yee, about Chinese movie extras trying to make a go of it on the studio lots in Hengdian, a major movie filming center not far from Shanghai.

    The closing film on June 21 will be the China-Russia co-production “Ballet in the Flames of War,” directed by China’s Yachun Dong and Russia’s Nikita Mikhalkov. Organizers said the movie “highlights the friendship between China and Russia through a love story unfolding in the midst of World War II.”

    This year marks the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, and the festival has programed a special section of films devoted to this theme, including “Casablanca,” German director Volker Schlondorff’s “The Tin Drum” and Andre Singer’s Holocaust documentary “Night Will Fall.”

    Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev, whose “Leviathan” was nominated for the foreign language Oscar this year, is heading up this year’s jury for the Golden Goblet award.

    The festival offers cinema-goers the chance to see a number of American films, including “Whiplash” and “Birdman.” Former boxer Mike Tyson is attending the festival not because he has an American film in the festival but because he has a guest part in the upcoming Chinese movie “Ip Man 3.”

    The Shanghai fest will offer fans the chance to see all six films in the “Star Wars” series, a first for the mainland.

    “Jackie Chan Action Movie Week” is expected to draw a number of international filmmakers, including Renny Harlin and Brett Ratner, for a series of forums and screenings.(SD-Agencies)