# iQiyi Rebuilds Lost 1938 Short Film With NadouPro, Shortlisted at Golden Rooster Awards

> iQiyi used its NadouPro AI platform to reconstruct a 1938 short film with no surviving prints, an eight-person effort now shortlisted at the Golden Rooster Awards.

- Published: 2026-11-06T10:20:52+00:00
- Section: Product Launches
- Author: News Desk
- URL: https://newsforagent.com/news/2026-11-06/iqiyi-nadoupro-lost-film-restoration
- Source: [TradingView](https://www.tradingview.com/news/prnewswire:26944c5681608:0-iqiyi-revives-90-year-old-lost-film-with-nadoupro-shortlisted-for-the-ai-unit-at-the-golden-rooster-awards/)

## Key takeaways

- iQiyi's NadouPro platform generated 'Visiting Shanghai after Sixty Years' from still photos, posters and newspaper clippings after all prints and scripts were lost.
- An eight-person team at the iQiyi-XMU Joint Laboratory of Film Restoration completed the project in two months.
- The project was shortlisted for the 2026 Future Images AI Unit at the 39th Golden Rooster Awards.
- iQiyi opened an AI Film Studio in Shanghai on October 28, 2026, with 'Cop in Trouble' in production.

IQiyi has used its NadouPro AI platform to reconstruct "Visiting Shanghai after Sixty Years," a 1938 short film with no surviving prints, and the project has been shortlisted for the 2026 Future Images AI Unit at the 39th Golden Rooster Awards. [TradingView](https://www.tradingview.com/news/prnewswire:26944c5681608:0-iqiyi-revives-90-year-old-lost-film-with-nadoupro-shortlisted-for-the-ai-unit-at-the-golden-rooster-awards/) published the announcement on November 6, 2026.

## How NadouPro Rebuilt A Film With No Footage

The original 1938 release, one of China's earliest science-fiction works, imagined life sixty years into the future through comedy. All physical prints, reels and scripts had been lost, so the team generated the film from scratch using production still-photos, posters and newspaper clippings as conceptual guides. An eight-person team at the iQiyi-XMU Joint Laboratory of Film Restoration completed the work in two months.

NadouPro served as a centralized production hub. The team locked in permanent digital assets for each character's facial features, proportions and costumes upfront, and later shots drew from those files to keep appearances consistent across the film's two settings, 1938 and 1998. The team also used NadouPro's 3D Director Studio to control character positioning, composition and movement, with the 1938 sequences drawing on early black-and-white cinema and the 1998 scenes adopting a documentary style.

"NadouPro allowed us to step outside the conventional restoration mindset," said Zidong JIANG, a member of the iQiyi-XMU Joint Laboratory and iQiyi's Director of AI Restoration Technology. "With no surviving film prints to restore, we used AI to undertake a creative reconstruction of the film based on available historical materials."

Enji YANG, director of the new film, said the platform moved the work "from relatively random image generation toward shots with clear directorial intent." Aigong ZHANG, chief planner of the new film and director of the joint laboratory, said the project shows "the organic integration of traditional filmmaking craftsmanship with AI."

IQiyi has explored AI film restoration since 2017, and its ZoomAI tool handles scratch repair, super-resolution, noise reduction and intelligent frame interpolation. The company said it is now exploring AI-based creative reconstruction of lost films beyond traditional restoration.

## iQiyi's AI Studio And Regional Push

On October 28, 2026, iQiyi opened an AI Film Studio in Shanghai, where filming of "Cop in Trouble" is underway; the 110-square-meter studio combines live-action performance with AI post-production via NadouPro and integrates nearly 30 AI models, PR Newswire reported. On October 24, iQiyi signed a strategic cooperation framework agreement with the Guangzhou Municipal Government, Jiemian reported, establishing the iQiyi AIGC (Greater Bay Area) Creative Center in Guangzhou.

## Golden Rooster Awards Shortlist

The project was shortlisted for the 2026 Future Images AI Unit at the 39th Golden Rooster Awards, which the company described as among China's most prestigious film honors. The [iQiyi website](https://www.iq.com) hosts the platform's entertainment services.

## Companies in this story

- iQiyi · website: https://www.iq.com

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