Panda
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Australian Premiere presented with Taiwan Film Festival in Australia
Overview
A penniless intellectual healing people through poetry, a drifter searching for a dragon, a man seeking the soul of his dead wife, and a young woman living in her father’s shadow. In the ancient city of Nanjing, ordinary people wander like ghosts: trauma, suffering, and obsession propel them along the Yangtze River, where the old and the new exist side by side. Seeking salvation in its rushing waters, four characters struggle to move forward as the past continues to haunt them.
“One of the most exciting Chinese debuts of recent times, a grimy and glorious epic set along the banks of the Yangtze River”
“The promising self-announcement of a new, great talent”
Why You Should See This Film
Xinyang Zhang’s debut premiered at the Berlinale in 2026 in the Forum section before going on to play at First Films' fave festival, New Directors/New Films in New York. The storytelling in Panda is a wondrous homage to classical Chinese novels and magical realism that—combined with a striking visual language—announces the arrival of a distinctive new voice in Chinese cinema.
First Films
First Films, founded in 2022, is a film festival dedicated to introducing Sydney audiences to new daring debut films never screened in Sydney before. Beginning in 2024, the festival also started showcasing significant retrospective debuts. First Films aims to challenge, inspire, and entertain. Now celebrating its fifth edition, First Films will take place in 2026, October 27th to November 1st at Golden Age Cinema & Bar and Sydney Opera House.
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