HOLLYWOOD talent including Bradley Cooper and Ian McKellen and directors Ang Lee and Renny Harlin were on hand Saturday night to fete the opening of the Shanghai International Film Festival (SIFF) that will run through Sunday.

    The growing overseas star power at the event reflects the exponential expansion of the Chinese film industry and its ripple effect across the global movie business. The opening night took place as the Chinese-financed, Legendary Entertainment-produced “Warcraft” surpassed US$140 million on its fourth day of release in China.

    Top Chinese talent on the red carpet included stars Fan Bingbing, Shu Qi and Jackie Chan.

    At the opening ceremony at Shanghai Grand Theater, British actor Ian McKellen and Chinese actor Jiao Huang recited the verses by William Shakespeare to salute the great playwright.

    Serbian auteur Emir Kusturica will chair the jury presiding over this year’s main competition section, which awards the festival’s Golden Goblet Awards. Other jurors include Atom Egoyan, Daniele Luchetti, Pema Tseden, Karena Lam, Abderrahmane Sissako and Yan Geling.

    The 14 shortlisted films include “Mr. Church” by Australian director Bruce Beresford, “Salt and Fire” by German filmmaker Werner Herzog, “Forest, 4 AM” by Polish director Jan Jakub Kolski, as well as “Coke and Bull” by Chinese director Cao Baoping.

    Making its world premiere at the festival, Herzog’s 19th fictional feature “Salt and Fire” is described as an environmentalist thriller. It follows a scientist and a corporate CEO who are forced to team up despite their ideological differences when a remote South American supervolcano begins to erupt. The movie was shot last year on the salt flats of Bolivia, a characteristically harsh Herzogian setting.

    Elsewhere in the program, the event will feature retrospectives dedicated to the works of Luchino Visconti, Andre Tarkovsky, Woody Allen and the late Hong Kong star Leslie Cheung. Allen’s most recent film, “Cafe Society,” which debuted in Cannes last month, will receive its Asian premiere in Shanghai.

    Japanese and Korean sidebars highlight East Asian regional favorites, such as Kyoshi Kurosawa’s thriller “Creepy” and Lee Joon-ik’s period epic “The Throne.” In the art house arena, Laszlo Nemes’ Oscar winner “Son of Saul” will receive a special screening, while genre cinema is well served with a section of James Bond classics and the second annual Jackie Chan Action Movie Week, featuring 20 cutting-edge contemporary action flicks from around the world in a program overseen by Chan himself. Documentary and animation competitive sections are also planned.

    All eight of the Harry Potter movies also will be screened, with organizers promising that some of sort of “surprise” involving J.K. Rowling herself will take place during the fest. A lineup of Oscar-winning titles from 2015 rounds out the Hollywood involvement in the event, including “Spotlight,” “The Big Short,” “Room,” “Bridge of Spies,” “The Danish Girl,” “Steve Jobs” and “Joy.”(SD-Agencies)