The Montreal World Film Festival

MILLION DOLLAR CROCODILE, a popular entertainment directed by Chinese filmmaker Lisheng Lin, will open the 2012 Montreal World Film Festival, and will inaugurate its World Greats section, it was announced by MWFF president Serge Losique. "The Chinese cinema is one of the strongest in the world right now and can be compared to Hollywood in its variety and depth," stated Serge Losique. Director Lisheng Lin and the film's principal actors will be in attendance in Montreal.

 

Xiao Xing is just a small boy, but his best friend Amao is 36 feet long. Amao is a crocodile. A native of Thailand, Amao had been living in a rural crocodile farm run by a veteran reptile wrangler, Bald Liu. But when his wildlife farm goes bust, Liu is forced to sell its reptiles to a shady businessman, Zhao Da Zui, who has plans to turn them into culinary delicacies. Sensing his fate, Amao breaks out of his cage, kills the chef and escapes into the nearby brush. Along the way, desperate to avoid capture, the crocodile swallows a bag containing a cellphone and a woman's purse with a large sum of money that its owner, Wen Yan, had earned during her eight years in Italy. At first her story about a giant crocodile gets the woman labeled a nuisance, if not worse, but when reports of other sightings accumulate, not to mention a rash of destroyed property, Xiao Xing's father, the local deputy, gets involved and, eventually, even the army. Now it's everyone versus Amao. Everyone but Xiao Xing.

 

Born in Fujian, China in 1969, Lisheng Lin studied cinema at the Beijing Film Academy and began his career writing scripts, in particular Yan Chuang's INKSTONE in 1995. In 1999 he made his directorial debut on a telefilm, WO AI KA FA PIAOPIAO, followed in 2002 by SPICY GIRLS. In 2004 he co-wrote the script for Feng Xiagang's WORLD WITHOUT THIEVES which opened the 2005 Montreal World Film Festival. He subsequently directed two of his own features, THE OTHER HALF, in 2007, and A DISAPPEARING VILLAGE in 2010.

 

 

The Montreal World Film Festival runs from August 23rd to September 3rd .