Chinese film director Bi Gan will receive the honorary Golden Lady Halimaguada Award at the 25th Las Palmas de Gran Canaria International Film Festival. The festival will also feature a complete retrospective of the director’s work, along with a selection of his films.
The festival described Bi as “one of the most original and contemporary filmmakers of the past decade” and his work as “a true masterpiece,” according to festival director Luis Miranda.
Bi will be attending the festival and accepting the award on April 29th at Cine Yermo Las Arenas. Following the screening of his latest feature, Resurrection, which won the Special Jury Prize at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, there will be a discussion with the filmmaker along with his 2016 short, The Secret Goldfish.
Titled ‘Be Gun Blues’, it is a retrospective of his breakout debut ‘Kaili Blues’, which won the festival’s top prize in 2016. The program brings together six films spanning his career, including the full-length features “Kairi Blues,” “A Long Day’s Journey into the Night,” and “Resurrection,” as well as three short films, “The Poet and the Singer,” “Short Stories,” and “The Secret Goldfish.”
As part of the festival’s clean slate tradition, director Bi selected Fei Mu’s “Spring in a Small Town” and Jia Zhangke’s “The World” to screen alongside his own films. These two groundbreaking works reflect important elements of Chinese cinema that shaped his artistic outlook.
The inclusion of The World, which won the Golden Lady Halimaguada Award and Best Cinematography in 2005, highlights a broader continuity in the festival’s history. Jia received the same honorary award at the 10th anniversary edition, and Bi joins a generational lineage of Chinese filmmakers recognized by the festival.
