Surprise Contest Begins | It’s More Fun When You Lose

|“A24’s breakthrough from the rigidity and poverty of mainstream genres is not a shortcut; it is the only path for directors of new genres.”

At the 2025 Surprise Film Festival’s Genre Creation Workshop, director Yang Chao offered this resolute response.

Blockbusters steeped in the logic of “success formulas” have lost their universal relevance in China’s film industry, where the weak are weeded out. Rather than asking “how to take a shortcut,” a set of values that is sufficiently strong, provocative, and even rebellious against the mainstream is the true rule of the game in the open world of surprises.

“No one can usurp your observations, understanding, and perceptions of the life around you.” Only instinctive, subconscious, reflexive expressions and interactions can build an unshakable and unassailable set of values.

If we compare the world of genre cinema to a never-ending soccer match, every shot a player takes is a key moment. But how a player falls in love, how they eat a hamburger while sitting on the bench, how they discuss loss in the locker room, or the childhood experience of falling into a pond and learning to rely on their left leg—all these moments will shape the narrative’s rise, fall, and turning points on the field.

The German philosopher Leibniz’s theory of possible worlds posits that an infinite number of such worlds exist. Today, various texts and media are interconnected, forming a narrative universe for young filmmakers—“Surprise” serves not only as a magnetic force where young filmmakers and the industry converge, but also as a playground where film “plays” together with games, music, artificial intelligence, science and technology, and even lifestyles.

Just as we have invited creators to do over the past two years: Play with the world on your own terms and make it your own.

The 2026 FIRST Surprise Film Festival is now open for submissions.

🟩 Magnetic Field Section | Live-Action Short Film Competition

🟩 Bamboo Dragonfly Section | Animated Short Film Competition

🟩 Puzzle Section | Live-Action Short Film Showcase

Submissions are now open. We invite all participants to click the【竞赛 – FIRST影展 · 西宁青年/惊喜】button to view the submission guidelines.

“Dwarf Fortress,” the pioneer of open-world games, has built a free-roaming world without a fixed storyline through 710,000 lines of code and an ever-evolving setting. Similarly, the FIRST Surprise Film Festival does not impose a “main quest” to guide creators toward ‘success’; the narrative initiative remains firmly in the hands of those who dare to “play” and create—

You can choose to be a fortress designer and builder, watching the narrative of a new world flourish under your guidance;

or you can choose to venture alone into fortresses created by others, playing the role of a free and solitary adventurer.

A bizarre cat death once occurred in *Dwarf Fortress*: a cat was found lying in its own vomit. Players initially suspected alcohol poisoning, only to discover that the system didn’t allow cats to drink. The truth was that drunken dwarves had spilled ale during a brawl; the cat’s fur became soaked, and after licking it, the cat died of alcohol poisoning due to its low body weight.

This was not a plot pre-programmed by the developers, but a miracle of emergent storytelling—when the underlying rules governing dwarf brawls, fluid physics, and feline instincts all came into play simultaneously, an unexpected “new bug” was born.

When we stop obsessing over shortcuts to viral hits and stop forcing the main plot, but instead refine the characters’ subconscious and the underlying laws of the world, the characters will inadvertently “knock over a wine glass,” and the story will naturally branch out in unexpected ways. This reality—which defies common sense yet remains logically sound—is the sharpest weapon for breaking free from clichés, and it is the ultimate “surprise.”

The Dwarven settlement is destined to fall, yet players willingly embrace this fate—Losing is Fun has long been its most distinctive spiritual essence. Perhaps… we can still win one more time!