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OPENING NIGHT FILM: LITTLE FOREST
When Hye-won flees Seoul’s empty calories and daily humiliations, she returns to her rural town with a voracious craving to whip up the good stuff. A gorgeous cooking journey based on a popular manga, auteur Yim Soon-rye’s latest glows with the beauty of self-invention, seasonal joys, and homemade makgeoli.
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CENTERPIECE FILM: INVENTING TOMORROW
Science mixes with young adult passion in this exhilarating dose of hope and Inspector Gadget genius. Teens from Mexico, Hawaii, Indonesia and India pursue ingenious solutions for environmental crises close to home on their way to the largest science fair in the world. A riveting journey and ode to teamwork…
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CLOSING NIGHT FILM: RAMEN SHOP
A cinematic turducken of food movie wrapped in a love story marinated by Singapore’s multi-ethnic history. Two iconic dishes and one iconic director come together in a Japanese chef’s search for his Singaporean mother’s soup recipe, discovering forbidden love and family rifts swimming in the broth. Foregoing nostalgia, Khoo vividly…
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STAYCATION
Sex, more sex, indecent proposals, and Indian food tensions punctuate every minute of Tanuj Chopra’s latest dramedy about a millennial couple grappling with insecurities and unearthed phone pics, all within the tangled bedsheets of their apartment.
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LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT
After returning to his hometown, Luo Hongwu finds in an old clock the photo of a mysterious woman, triggering a romantic and existential quest that will lead him, the audience, and perhaps the entire apparatus of cinema itself, on a nocturnal journey through tangled moebius strips of memory and dreams.
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SHOPLIFTERS
Scrambling just below the radar is a rag-tag family that subsists on petty thievery. When they decide to take in a young girl from the cold, the unspeakable secrets that hold this improvised household together start to spell danger. Creative living and the hardest bonds to break enliven this nimble…
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BLOWIN’ UP
Deep in Queens, Judge Toko Serita has created a courtroom remarkably uninterested in crime. A space where women caught in sex work can wipe their slate utterly clean. A gripping documentary on the revolutions that happen when a small group of women rethink the unthinkable within a rigid criminal system.
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DEAR EX
Sanlian is left bewildered after her husband asks for a divorce and his sudden death reveals the beneficiary of his insurance policy is his gay partner, who her son suddenly decides to live with. With humor and heart, three people must navigate strange living arrangements, fresh grief and new identities.
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KILLING
Young ronin Mokunoshin is recruited away from countryside life and must grapple with a samurai sword he has never used to kill. Known as the legendary creator of Tetsuo, Tsukamoto continues to experiment, this time with a samurai’s inner turmoil as he confronts the mythical violence he is known for.
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BITTER MELON
A dark revenge comedy featuring a Filipino American family overcoming domestic violence demons with the worst son ever. H.P. Mendoza returns, mixing multiple genres and tones in his transgressive take on the home-for the-holidays story.
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MR. AND MRS. CRUZ
Two strangers with the same last name meet serendipitously while traveling to the beautiful island of Palawan where everyone mistakes them for a married couple. With the shy heart of Before Sunset, their romantic musings and meanderings twist and turn toward an unpredictable destination.
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A LAND IMAGINED
In this breathtaking Singaporean noir, the black heart of the criminal underworld isn’t drugs but sand, used to expand an ever-growing shoreline. A hard boiled detective searches for a missing migrant worker and goes down a Lynchian rabbit hole unlike any Singapore seen before. Winner of the Golden Leopard at…
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ONE CUT OF THE DEAD
Can a zombie wield an axe? Would Hot Potato with a severed arm work on-screen? How far will a fast, cheap, but average director go to ensure that his masterpiece doesn’t fall to pieces? Director Shinichiro Ueda’s debut answers all of these questions and more in the ingenious zombie horror-comedy…
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A FAMILY TOUR
A dissident Chinese filmmaker exiled in Hong Kong finds a way for her young son to meet the grandmother she can no longer visit on the mainland: by intersecting on a tourist trip to Taiwan. Swirling emotions of joy, regret, hesitation, and betrayal grip the family through the gentle pangs…
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AUGUST AT AKIKO’S
Saxophone in hand, Alex goes searching for his grandparents on the Big Island, only to discover they have long passed away, leading him to free-spirited Akiko’s Buddhist B&B. A breathtaking ode to jazz, empathy, and an island breathing ancestral mystery and healing.
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Film Sections
There's a festival for everybody at SDAFF. Pick your path from the sections below.
