HOLLYWOOD might be splashing millions to court Mainland Chinese cinema-goers by casting the likes of Fan Bingbing and Zhang Ziyi in English blockbusters but one foreign filmmaker has caught the hearts and imagination of the people there with his low-budget talkie.

Icelandic writer-producer-director Robert Douglas's This is Sanlitun, made for a paltry US$165,000 ($206,000), has been the talk of the town in Beijing despite it being mostly in English and not receiving a cinematic release in China.

But word-of-mouth has turned the comedy, which chronicles the misadventures of two expatriates in the Chinese capital, into a cult hit as pop-up screenings sell out everywhere from museum halls to a Starbucks branch in where else but Sanlitun, an upmarket area in Beijing popular with expatriates because of its watering holes. The film will be screened at the 24th Singapore European Union Film Festival next Friday with Douglas in attendance for a Q&A session after.