As the opening of the 67th Venice International Film Festival approaches, several Chinese-language films that are in the running for major awards are attracting buzz.

Favored entries include the 3-D animated film "Space Guy" by sixth-generation Chinese film pioneer Zhang Yuan, who is considered by many to be China's first independent filmmaker, as well as being the winner of the 56th Venice Film Festival's Director's Award for his path-breaking 1999 movie "Seventeen Years." His latest effort will be screened in the Fuori Concorso. Also in contention for the Golden Lion is a commercial film directed by Hark Tsui (Xu Ke), "Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom," which is the only Chinese-language film up for grand prize. (It's also in the running for the best director, actor, actress awards.)

Strong contenders for the Horizon (Orizzonti) Award, meanwhile, are two documentaries by acclaimed director Huang Wenhai, "Crust" and "Reconstructing Faith." The latter film centers on Buddhism — a politically sensitive topic in China — and was filmed at the same time as Huang Wenhai's masterpiece "We," which received the Special Jury Prize in the Horizon (Orizzonti) Awards in 2008. The documentary grapples with the everyday politics and life-and-death questions facing Buddhists in the People's Republic. “These were both the hardest and yet most important issues to confront,” says the director. "Crust," on the other hand, is a 13-minute short film about the life of a Chinese steelworker in a Yangtze River shipyard that integrates elements of the documentary and experimental film.   .

Also nominated for the Horizon award is multimedia artist Sun Xun's "21 Grams." The short animated film, which borrows its name from Alejandro González Iñárritu's 2003 feature film starring Sean Penn and Naomi Watts, draws on the notion that we lose 21 grams when we die. Rather than relying on familiar movie stars to deliver its punch, however, Sun Xun's experimental film utilizes his distinctively sketched color animations to render each scene both visually and conceptually provocative.

Hong Kong director Clara Law's "Red Earth" is also among the contenders for this prize. Her "Red Earth" is one segment of a larger project, "Quattro Hong Kong," featuring the independent contributions of four Hong Kong directors: Herman Yau, Clara Law, Heiward Mak and Fruit Chan.

Others up for the prize include respected British director and multimedia artist Isaac Julien, whose film “Better Life” chronicles the Morecambe Bay tragedy of 2004 where 23 illegal Chinese laborers in England drowned as they were forced to work picking cockles against a rising tide. Their plight reflects the struggles of many illegal migrants who have been smuggled into the U.K. and elsewhere only to be exploited by “snakeheads,” or human traffickers. These gangs lure impoverished workers from China, promising untold riches, stable employment, and a new and better life in exchange for a fee, only to deliver them into brutal indentured servitude in disastrously unsafe conditions.

Julien's multichannel video installation work, "Ten Thousand Waves," which premiered at the Sydney Biennale and was recently exhibited in Hong Kong and Shanghai, will also be screened. The film features an impressive array of stars from various fields, such as renowned Hong Kong actress Maggie Cheung, actress Zhao Tao (who found fame starring in many of Jia Zhangke's films), the poet Wang Ping, and acclaimed filmmaker and video artist Yang Fudong.