Noted film festival director, academic and producer Marco Mueller has secured the backing of Shanghai University to give a secure home to the Work In Progress Lab initiative he launched in January 2024 in Macau.

The inaugural WIP Lab, which helped independent Chinese films that were either in post-production or completed but needing sales and release support,claimed multiple successes. These included Huo Meng’s “Living the Land”, which earned the best director award at the 2025 Berlin festival, and Fang Liang’s “Water Can Go Anywhere”, which played at the Shanghai International Film Festival.

But the lab was hampered by logistical issues that included Macau’s last-minute greenlight of the event and jurisdictional wrinkles that meant some of the unfinished films had to be screened in Zhuhai, across the mainland China border.

The Shanghai event will run 7-12 December 2025, a timing that follows Asia’s last film markets of the year, but which still allows successful works-in-progress time to apply for entry to major film festivals in 2026.

Mueller and the university will host delegations of programmers from a dozen leading festivals such as Cannes, Venice, Sundance, Busan and Berlin. Screenings may also be open to distributors and sales agents.

Currently the artistic director of the Film Art Research Centre at Shanghai University, Mueller has held prominent positions at the Locarno, Rome and Venice festivals in Europe. These were followed by similar roles at the Beijing

and Pingyao festivals and at the International Film Festival & Awards Macao. – By Patrick Frater