Setting out from Lingnan, the program journeys south.

On March 10th, the 2026 Maritime Guangdong Young Director Support Program (Maritime Guangdong Program), hosted by the Yangcheng Evening News Group, officially opens for applications.

To promote cultural exchange and mutual learning among regions, this year's Maritime Guangdong Program adopts the theme "South of Lingnan", inviting young directors from around the world to submit original short film scripts that explore the deep historical ties, vivid cultural stories, and strong contemporary links between the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and Southeast Asia.

Lingnan and Southeast Asia are geographically adjacent and culturally intertwined, sharing a long history of maritime civilization and rich cross-cultural practices. In 2026, as the APEC cooperation embarks on a new journey in Guangdong, the Maritime Guangdong Program sincerely invites creators worldwide to join an audiovisual dialogue rooted in shared memories and oriented toward a common future, capturing cultural exchange and mutual learning through the lens of youth.

Building a dialogue platform to shape a southern vision together

Since its launch in 2023, the Maritime Guangdong Program has been building a platform for cross-cultural exchange among young people through the medium of film. At a time of profound reconfiguration of global cultural narratives, video art remains a vital link for fostering understanding and building consensus.

In 2026, under the theme "South of Lingnan", the Maritime Guangdong Program aims to encourage young creators to break conventional perspectives and explore the broad and deep historical, cultural, and social connections between the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao region and Southeast Asia. The organizers hope that, through the dynamic medium of short films, diverse creative forces can be brought together to depict and tell the fluid stories of the southern world, providing new inspiration and references for regional cultural dialogue and filmmaking.

Exploring new frontiers in AI-driven filmmaking

Currently, the landscape of visual creation is undergoing a significant structural shift. The widespread adoption of digital production has made cinema no longer the exclusive domain of large industrial systems, allowing more creators to enter the field more lightly and openly. Emerging technologies such as generative AI are providing filmmakers with new avenues to expand their imagination.

At the same time, global exchanges inimage culture have become more frequent than ever, with experiences, languages, and aesthetics from diverse regions continuously converging. This has revitalized short films and independent creation as fertile ground for experimenting with new approaches. It is within this context that creators have begun to rethink the relationship between tools, technology, and expression.

The new edition of the Maritime Guangdong Program encourages creators, while respecting the principles of creation and copyright, to use these new technologies as supportive tools, exploring the narrative possibilities they offer in script development, visual style, and post-production.

Empowering emerging filmmakers with diverse support

This year's Maritime Guangdong Program will continue to invite renowned directors, producers, and screenwriters to serve as judges and mentors, selecting and training young filmmakers with a professional and careful approach.

The selection process will include preliminary and final rounds. Directors who make it through the preliminary round will be invited to participate in the MaP Training Camp, receiving multi-dimensional guidance from mentors on screenwriting, cinematography, editing, and other aspects. During the camp, young filmmakers will undergo the final selection round. Selected filmmakers will receive a support package from the Yangcheng Evening News Group, including 70,000 yuan in funding as well as resources for equipment, locations, and post-production, for the production of thematic short films.

Since its launch in 2023, the Maritime Guangdong Program has successfully discovered and nurtured 32 young directors, resulting in the production of 29 short films and the incubation of two feature films. Their works have been showcased or presented for funding opportunities at various domestic and international film festivals, including the Busan International Film Festival, Shanghai International Film Festival, Beijing International Film Festival, China Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival, and the Pingyao International Film Festival. Beyond this, the program has effectively bridged creators and their works with the film market and audiences through initiatives like the Training Camp and global roadshow series.

In 2026, building on the foundation of its first three editions, the Maritime Guangdong Program will continue to expand its reach and influence, promoting wider dissemination of young directors' works and using the power of cinema to foster cross-disciplinary, intergenerational, and international cultural exchange.

South of Lingnan | Applications Open for 2026 Maritime Guangdong Program

As we enter a period of reassessment for the grand narrative of globalization, the coordinate systemof world cinema is undergoing a structural realignment. The old center of gravity is shifting, and voices from the margins are now being heard. The most vital moving-image practices are emerging from the cracks of grand narratives, returning to real people, real places, and lived historical experience. In 2026, the Maritime Guangdong Young Director Support Program (Maritime Guangdong Program), under the theme "South of Lingnan," will continue to focus on short-film creation, launching an intellectual and aesthetic exploration that takes cross-regional storytelling as its method.

"South of Lingnan," first and foremost, is a recalibration of cinematic perspective. For a long time, the dominant routes of discussion in world cinema have been shaped by Euro-American cinema histories and industrial systems, while Asian cinema, especially Southeast Asian cinema, has often been positioned as a "regional genre" or a "cultural specimen." However, since the turn of the millennium, a steady stream of filmmakers from the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia with their strong authorial voices and place-based methodologies has risen to prominence at international film festivals. Together, they have formed a genealogy of southern cinema that diverges from mainstream industrial logic, known for low-budget production, a strong sense of realism, and hybrid genres. They are particularly active in shorts and mid-length films, becoming a crucial source for the renewal of contemporary cinematic language.

Lingnan is precisely the key node through which Chinese cinema can forge a tangible linkage with this southern cinema. As one of the earliest regions in Chinese history to be shaped by maritime civilization and cross-cultural exchange, Lingnan not only connects to Southeast Asia geographically, but also resonates with it in cultural genes, social structures, and aesthetic orientations. Through co-production mechanisms, festival exchanges, and the mobility of creators, interactions between Chinese and Southeast Asian cinema in recent years have shifted beyond subject matter and are increasingly entering a space of mutual learning in cinematic methods and narrative ethics.

The 2026 Maritime Guangdong Program treats "Lingnan" as a cinematic method—a creative logic that emphasizes local observation, a tactile sense of reality, and narrative flexibility. We attend to lived experience in motion: migration, labor, shifting family structures, the translation of faith and emotionand the like. These themes that recur across images from Southeast Asia and southern China together trace a hidden yet unmistakable southern cinematic thread.

In this context, the short film offers an irreplaceable space for experimentation. It requires filmmakers to complete a full narrative construction and makefirm aesthetic judgments within a limited runtime, demanding the precision of expression and the density of ideas, rather than the scale of production. It is in short films that many major contemporary directors first crystallized their style, and it is also here that cross-regional exchanges of storytelling and aesthetics can unfold in freer and more vivid ways.

Meanwhile, in the new technological context, the tools of audiovisual creationare evolving rapidly. Generative AI technologyand human-machine collaborationhave become new ways for contemporary filmmakers to expand the boundaries of their imagination. The Maritime Guangdong Program encourages filmmakers to use AI as a supporting tool. With due respect for originalityand copyright, appropriate use of technology, whether in script development, visual experimentation, sound design, or in image generation and post-production workflows, can open up entirely new narrative possibilities.

As it has done over the past three years, through creative support, training camps, mentorship programs, and promotions at international film festivals, the Maritime Guangdong Program will help these works integrate into a more complete film ecosystem. In doing so, they will exist not merely as "audiovisual projects", but as works that can be seen, discussed, and written about.

Ultimately, what we hope to present is not an isolated collection of works, but a mutually resonant "short film anthology", one that collectively sketches a portrait of the southern world in motion, and offers Chinese-language cinema a reference point for re-situating itself.

In 2026, let us set out from Lingnanand journey south, to reimagine how world cinema might connecton the scale of the short film.

Timeline

March 10th–May 10th, 2026: Application

May 20th, 2026: Preliminary Selection Results Announced

Late May 2026: Maritime Short Film Training Camp

June 1st, 2026: Final Selection Results Announced

Aug 20th, 2026: Delivery & Final Acceptance of Completed Films

Sep–Nov 2026: Screenings and Exchanges

Application Guidelines:

1. Eligibility: Applicants (or at least half of a joint team) must be Chinese citizens (including Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan residents) or overseas Chinese aged 18 to 45. Exceptionally talented applicants may be considered beyond this limit.

2. Work Requirements: Applicants must submit an original short-film screenplay for a project that has not yet started shooting. The work must closely align with the theme "South of Lingnan" and should naturally demonstrate cultural linkages between the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao region and Southeast Asia in terms of history, humanities, society, and related dimensions.

3. Selection Process:The selection process consists of two stages: a preliminary selection conducted by the Organizing Committee, followed by a final selection conducted by the Jury Panel. After the preliminary results are announced, shortlisted directors will be invited to attend the Maritime Short Film Training Camp. Shortlisted directors must fully participate in the Training Camp to be eligible for the final selection.

4. Creative Support: Final selected projects will receive a creative support fund of 70,000 yuan provided by the Yangcheng Evening News Group, along with support in professional equipment, post-production, publicity, and promotion, among other resources.

5. Delivery of Completed Films: Final selected projects must complete production and submit the completed films by August 20th,2026,for acceptance by the Organizing Committee. The completed films should be 10 to 30 minutes in length. Eligible genres include fiction, documentary, experimental, and animation, among others (excluding commercials).

6. Publicity and Promotion: The Organizing Committee will coordinate screenings and exchange activities for the selected films domestically and internationally from September to November 2026. Applicants must agree to cooperate with related publicity and promotional activities.

How to Apply

Application Details & FAQ

Email: maritimeguangdong@gmail.com

Domestic ApplicationChannel

International Application Channel

文 | 记者 艾修煜 沈韩成
图 | 羊城晚报山海计划融媒体工作室
翻译 | 魏薇
审校 | 曾敏