Is Loveless (2017) a film festival film on demand?

Abstract This is a Deep Focus roundtable discussing Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev’s film Loveless (2017), originally published on 1 July 2018, and facilitated by then editor, Zhao Jin. While two of the guests expressed relatively positive opinions of the film, film scholar Kai Yin gave Loveless a low score, calling it a dianying jie feihua yishu dianying (literally, ‘nonsense arthouse cinema at film festivals’), which was also referred to as a ‘film festival film on demand’ during the discussion. The panelists also discussed the global trend of making zhongxin sixiang shi dianying or gainian xianxing dianying (‘concept-oriented films’), or wei yishupian (‘pseudo art films’), which feature simplistic, ideological messages and cater to the tastes of major film festivals; they also sharply criticized the commercial, industrial operations of the film festival system.