Anime film The Little Monsters of Lang Lang Mountain opens the 2026 Mainland China Film Showcase

The 2026 Mainland China Film Showcase kicked off on October 6 at Hong Kong City Hall with a very special screening: The Little Monsters of Lang Lang Mountain (Lang Lang Shan Xiao Yao Guai), the animated film that served as the opening feature for the entire event.

The program is organized by the Leisure and Cultural Services Department of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government and the Southern Film Culture Foundation. Over the course of more than a month, from October 6 to November 15, 12 selected films from mainland China will be screened.

What stands out most to us is that animation holds a leading role from day one. That doesn't always happen at a general film showcase, and here the organizers decided that The Little Monsters of Lang Lang Mountain would be the one to kick things off.

Six venues for a month of cinema

The screenings aren't confined to a single location. The showcase will travel to six different spaces across Hong Kong: City Hall, the Film Archive, the Space Museum, North District Town Hall, the East Kowloon Cultural Centre, and the University of Hong Kong.

That variety of venues is good news for local audiences. Going all the way downtown isn't the same as having a screening near home or university, and this way the organizers make sure more people can get to these films.

The opening left some lovely images. Hosts were on stage talking about the opening film, and the audience was also seen taking photos with the informational panels for The Little Monsters of Lang Lang Mountain. You could tell people showed up ready to enjoy the screening.

Opening of the 2026 Mainland China Film Showcase at Hong Kong City Hall.m.sohu.com

A monster movie to whet the appetite

The film's title already tells us a lot: Lang Lang Shan Xiao Yao Guai translates roughly to "the little monsters of Lang Lang Mountain." Without getting into spoilers, it's a Chinese animation project that blends fantasy and creatures, and here it serves as an introduction to the kind of cinema being made in mainland China.

We love that a showcase like this bets on animation for its opening. In recent years, Chinese animated cinema has taken huge strides, with productions increasingly reaching more festivals and international markets. Seeing a monster movie at the opening is a sign that animation is no longer a second-class genre at these events.

Audience members posing in front of the informational panels for The Little Monsters of Lang Lang Mountain.m.sohu.com

The full list of the 12 titles in the showcase has not been revealed yet, beyond the opening film. What we do know is that there will be plenty of cinema to discover through mid-November.

Would you like to see a film like The Little Monsters of Lang Lang Mountain hit theaters in Latin America? Hopefully a distributor will take a chance on it, because Chinese animation is crying out for more space in our theaters.