Audience members watch the movie A First Farewell at Tian Shan Cinema in Shanghai, on July 20, 2020. [Photo by Gao Erqiang/chinadaily.com.cn]

After the closure of cinemas for six months due to the novel coronavirus outbreak, Chinese moviegoers finally returned to their beloved silver screen.

On Monday, cinemas in low-risk areas started to reopen under COVID-19 prevention protocols. Most chose to screen old films that have already won great popularity in the past few years, such as the Disney production Coco, last year's Chinese thriller Sheep Without A Shepherd and the animation Ne Zha.

The new productions with high budgets, which should have come out during Spring Festival, have yet to be released.

Nevertheless, one film, the story of two children in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, is an exception. The award-winning A First Farewell became the first new film to be released after the reopening.

According to Maoyan, the major Chinese business analysis website on the movie industry, the film was released in 44 cities, including Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shen­zhen, and became the highest-grossing production in cinemas on Monday.

On Monday, about 29 percent of the over 1,600 screenings nationwide were arranged for A First Farewell.

"I think our distribution this time is special," said Wu Feiyue, chief distributor of the film. "We used to promote specific films before, but now we promote not only a film, but also the whole industry. It's time to rebuild confidence and bring people back to cinemas.

"And, in the current mood of a comeback after a long farewell, no other film suits better than this one with its warm tone," he said.

Tian Shan Cinema at Hongqiao Art Center, one of the most historic cinemas in Shanghai, started preparations to receive its first customers as early as 8:30 am on Monday. A First Farewell became the first film to be released that day. Its earliest screening was at 9:50 am.

All 27 tickets for this debut were sold out in less than an hour on Sunday. For safety reasons, tickets have to be booked online in advance with real identities, and attendance per show must not exceed 30 percent, according to Chinese Film Administration. And the showtime for screenings should not exceed two hours.

"We didn't expect all the tickets to be sold," said Shi Yijing, manager of the cinema. "Audiences have said they missed the cinema a lot. We, too, have sorely missed them after six months of closure."

A man from the city's Sanlin neighborhood in Pudong district, who asked to remain anonymous, said he arrived at the cinema as early as 9 am as he wanted to be among the first to catch a movie in the theater.

A First Farewell follows the friendship between Isa and Kalbinur, two elementary school students of the Uygur ethnic group in Aksu, Xinjiang. Isa has to experience the first farewell in his lifetime, as his friend is to move to another school. And Isa also needs to say goodbye to his deaf mother because his father wants to send her to a nursing facility.

The film, with dialogue in Uygur and Mandarin, is director Wang Lina's first feature-length production.

At the 69th Berlin International Film Festival in 2019, it won the "Crystal Bear", the best film award in the Generation Kplus section of children's films. It also won awards at international film festivals in Tokyo and Hong Kong later last year.

After COVID-19 was largely contained in China, Wu's team announced on July 13 that A First Farewell would be released on the first day of the reopening of cinemas. However, he said he didn't expect the day of the cinema reopening to come so soon.

"Little time was left, but it took us only half an hour from hearing the news to decide to hold the premiere as originally planned," Wu recalled. "We worked around the clock to contact every link in the industry chain and make sure digital copies of the film could be made and delivered to cinemas just in time."

They even did not have time to design new posters for the film.

Wu was overjoyed that the film was warmly welcomed by cinemas and moviegoers. On Saturday, TV host Wang Han, also a co-producer of the film, hosted a livestreaming broadcast to distribute discount coupons, and 16,000 coupons were booked within hours.

And even for moviegoers without coupons, buying a ticket for A First Farewell seems a bargain this time. The cheapest tickets were sold for 25 yuan ($3.6) in cinemas in big cities, and 20 yuan in smaller cities, a low price not commonly seen before the pandemic.

Wu and some other experts also pointed out that more new films are in need to bolster the hard-hit industry.

"Producers of high-budget major productions continue to wait and see," Rao Shuguang, president of the China Film Critics Association, said in an interview with China Central Television. "But only if these films soon return to screens can people's enthusiasm for watching films be fully reignited. The film industry can only survive when cinemas are lively."