Recently, A UFO Falling from the Sky, one of the stories in My People, My Homeland, released a character poster and a trailer, where Liu Haoran and Wang Baoqiang, the "Chinatown Partners" well-known among Chinese audiences, evoking film fans’ happy memory of Detective Chinatown. For Chen Sicheng, the director of A UFO Falling from the Sky, the indefinite postponement of Detective Chinatown 3 due to the pandemic makes this year extremely special.

　　First Attempt in 2011

　　In 2011, Chen acted as Zhou Dong in The Man Behind the Courtyard House. The film tells the story about the Chen Zhihui, who misunderstands other people's views on human nature and wants to commit crimes again, leading to abnormal murders. Various emotional entanglements, life contradictions, and disputes between good and evil fill the film and highlight the conflict between the simple and pathetic nature and the cruel and ruthless behavior of the killer, triggering the battle between the good and evil of human nature.

　　Chen, as a supporting actor though, still won the "Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor" at the 3rd China Image Film Festival with his outstanding performance. In addition to the achievement made in the film industry, in 2011, he directed and starred Beijing Love Story, which was well received and became immensely popular among audience. 2011 meant a lot to Chen, who debuted in the film industry. It also meant a lot to the 1st Beijing International Film Festival (BJIFF).

　　In retrospect, in 2010, just before the first edition of the BJIFF, Beijing’s film box office has ranked first across the country for three consecutive years, accounting for one-eighth of the total. At that time, Beijing was home to most film education institutions and scientific research institutions and gathered more than 80% of the film resources such as China Film Group Corporation and China National Film Museum. Therefore, holding the 1st BJIFF was in line with Beijing’s need to build a world city, enhance the vitality of the capital’s cultural development, boost cultural soft power, expand film cooperation and exchanges between China and foreign countries, and establish an international image. It also met the needs of the film industry in China and Beijing for further development. The festival could pull together Beijing's film resources, make the film industry stronger, create an oriental film and television capital and give full play to the role of Beijing as a cultural center.

　　On top of that, the 1st BJIFF was held in April 2011.Unprecedentedly, 22 presidents of top international film festivals participated in the event, 8 Chinese and foreign master directors have high-end dialogues, 334 Chinese and foreign film institutions were attracted for project negotiation, and outstanding films from 42 countries and regions were screened at the event. The BJIFF in 2011, which has made a great success, marks the start of its decade journey.

　　Further Development in 2015

　　The year of 2015 was a milestone for Director Chen. Detective Chinatown, written and directed by him, was released at the end of the year. The film tells the story about Chinatown No. 1 Detective, Tang Ren and talented but stuttering boy Qin Feng, who must find the lost gold and figure out who the real murder is so as to prove their innocence in just seven days while getting rid of police and gangs. It gained a lot in reputation and box office, becoming a black horse among the films dedicated to the Chinese New Year and ending up with 818 million yuan at box office. Chen, as the director and screenwriter of the film, has shaped Detective Chinatown into one of the greatest IPs in the film market. Based on the achievements in 2015, Chen’s career gained great momentum. So did the 5th BJIFF.

　The 5th BJIFF closed on April 23, 2015, where the transaction volume reached 13.845 billion yuan, an increase of 32% over the previous edition, outdoing the Tokyo International Film Festival and other Asian film festivals, and becoming the largest film transaction market in Asia. During the event, a great number of masterpieces were screened, presenting the greater performance than any previous editions. The 5th BJIFF fully demonstrated the style feature of “Master, Mass, Market”, as well as the core value concept of “Beauty in Variety, Harmony in Diversity” in both project negotiation and artistic exchange, thus making breakthroughs in many aspects.

　　Another Miracle in 2018

　　In 2018, Chen Sicheng returned to the film market with Detective Chinatown 2, the sequel to the smash blockbuster Detective Chinatown franchise. The film tells the story of Tang Ren deceiving Qin Feng into participating in a world detective competition in New York for a huge bonus. The competition is held to find the murderer who killed the grandson of Uncle Seven, the godfather of Chinatown. The duo once again teams up to detect the case and risk their lives to create a tremendous uproar in New York. Since its release on February 16, 2018, Detective Chinatown 2 has continued the triumph of its previous installment, registering 341 million yuan at the box office on the very day of the release. It even secured up to 3.4 billion yuan in gross box office receipts, ranking second in China in the year. By then, the Detective Chinatown franchise has become an indispensable and important IP in the Chinese film market. In April that year, Chen attended the Opening Ceremony of the 8th BJIFF with the hit enjoying a sterling box office result and popularity on the market. Chen took to the stage together with Wu Jing, director of Wolf Warrior 2, Dante Lam, director of Operation Red Sea, and Zhang Hanyu, leading role of Operation Red Sea also appeared at the opening ceremony. With the appearance of the casts and crews of the top 3 films at the box office in the Chinese film history on the same stage, the “Operation Tiantan” for Chinese films, a milestone in the Chinese film history, was launched to make another ten-year promise to Chinese films.

　　At the opening ceremony, Chen Sicheng, along with the guests on the scene, talked freely about his understanding of the prospects of Chinese films and shared his opinions on the development of Chinese films in the coming ten years. “China will see a better result at the box office in ten years, but for me, I prefer to see Chinese films favored by more foreign audiences.” While the crew led by Chen shot the scenes of Detective Chinatown 2 in New York, he forged a partnership with the American Federation of Labor (AFL), striving to combine film art with Chinese aesthetic traditions. As a young director, Chen remains true to the original aspirations Chinese filmmakers share by using his own film language to tell the Chinese spirit and power of China to the world, committed to “creating more excellent films for the audience around the world”.

　　As with Chen’s persistence in bringing Chinese films to the world stage, the 8th BJIFF also made breakthroughs in diversity, internationality and innovation. The 8th edition became the first international cultural event to set a theme for the entire film festival. The Competition Section even attracted a total of 532 overseas entries from 70 countries and regions across six continents. Since its inception, the BJIFF has been working with outstanding filmmakers like Chen Sicheng to make efforts and forge ahead, with an aim to bring more Chinese films to the world.

　　Hunger for Innovation and Change in 2020

　　In early 2020, a novel coronavirus disease that swept the world swiftly suspended the activities in the Chinese film market. For Chen Sicheng, the year of 2020 undoubtedly presents a mixed picture. Among the last films released before the closure of cinemas across the country, there was Sheep Without a Shepherd produced by Chen, a smash hit at the box office. The film tells the story of a father outwitting the police with anti-reconnaissance techniques learned from films in order to protect his daughter. Although the film had a dismal performance in voice at the beginning of the release, it continued to gain momentum at later stages. In the context where the COVID-19 pandemic had a huge impact on the film market, the film still reaped an impressive box office take of 1.3 billion yuan. However, the third installment of the Detective Chinatown franchise, which was expected to be released during the Spring Festival period, has been postponed indefinitely due to the lockout of cinema circuits. Like Detective Chinatown 3, the 10th BJIFF also ran into the dilemma of being “suspended” as a result of the pandemic. Fortunately, the Organizing Committee of the Beijing International Film Festival took stock of the situation and turned adversity into opportunity. It launched the “Online BJIFF” concept, so that the BJIFF can be successfully held “online and offline”, enabling film fans and filmmakers to gather together online for the ten-year promise.

　　On August 23, 2020, Chen together with many senior filmmakers will attend the Decade-long Devotion to Films—BJIFF 10th Anniversary Forum, held by the Yanqi Lake in Huairou District, to discuss new approaches and measures for Chinese films and the BJIFF to break the deadlock. The BJIFF has been devoted to the film industry for a decade. Let us meet at the BJIFF this cool summer and make another ten-year promise!