Discoveries

GIRLS ALWAYS HAPPY

Director-actor Yang Mingming’s feisty new feature pits the cranky crackling wits of mother and daughter, both struggling writers stuck living together in the cramped eavesdropping confines of old Beijing. Their unusual camaraderie snaps with the dry comedy of flawed lovers and ambition hemmed by codependence.

Discoveries

INLAND SEA

Surrounded by cats in a remote Japanese village, fishing is braided into the lifestyles of all its aging but vivacious residents. A doc that unfolds with easy curiosity and reveals the rhythms and the underlying change of a dwindling way of life.

Discoveries

THE ISLAND

Fresh from the Whitney Biennial, a stunning film that weaves historical footage, interviews, and speculative fiction focused entirely on Pulau Bidong, an uninhabitable island that from 1978-1991 became the largest refugee camp post-Vietnam War. Monumental ruins and national debate mix with mythology as the last man on earth encounters a…

Discoveries

NERVOUS TRANSLATION

Yael, an eight-year old girl growing up in late 80's Philippines, confronts miracles and disasters both international and very, very small. With tremendous empathy, imagination, and attention to detail, director Shireen Seno evokes a child's world as strange and intimate as a dream.

Discoveries

SIR

A delicate and charming story of thwarted love as widowed villager Ratna takes a Mumbai job as a live-in-maid for handsome Ashwin, recovering from a failed engagement. Transcending savior narratives, Rohena Gera’s latest explores unpredictable agency across modern-day caste divides and the magnetic pull of reinvention.

Asian American Panorama

BETWEEN TIDES

As the Bonin Islands passed back and forth between US and Japan rule after WWII, for a young “Navy Generation” of multi-ethnic islanders, their citizenship, culture, and language changed overnight. Exploring the intimate ripple effects of ongoing statelessness, this film explores how these islanders hold onto remnants of their mixed…

Asia Pop!

BIG BROTHER

Donnie Yen puts the danger in Dangerous Minds as the martial arts superstar plays a US Marine returning to his former high school as an extremely unconventional teacher. Yen solves student problems at home, fights corrupt developers, and keeps fans happy with his lightning quick legs in this upbeat social…

Asia Pop!

GO-GO SISTERS

Set against the backdrop of the war in Vietnam, a group of high school girls in Da Lat calling themselves the Wild Horses vow never to leave each other’s side. When one is stricken with cancer in present day, the women rush to find each other again before it’s too…

Masters

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.

Asia Pop!

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.

Masters

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…

Discoveries

SIR

A delicate and charming story of thwarted love as widowed villager Ratna takes a Mumbai job as a live-in-maid for handsome Ashwin, recovering from a failed engagement. Transcending savior narratives, Rohena Gera’s latest explores unpredictable agency across modern-day caste divides and the magnetic pull of reinvention.

Asia Pop!

SUNSET IN MY HOMETOWN

Hak-Soo’s big chance to succeed as a rapper is interrupted when his father suddenly falls ill and he must return to his hometown. As he realizes nothing has changed, he begins a humorous and heartwarming journey to reckon with an unwelcome past.

Asian American Panorama

TO KILL ALICE

Literal explosives light the media firestorm surrounding Eunmi, a South Korean in America who rethinks her anti-Communist upbringing after visiting North Korea and pens a book calling for unification. Sangkyu Kim’s objective eye captures the public turmoil of her Korean book tour and wildly shifting assumptions about free speech, social…

Asian American Panorama

BUFFALO BOYS

Smoke-filled, action-packed, dust-covered Indonesian spin on the classic western. In the 19th century, American-born Indonesian gunslingers return to Java to avenge their father’s murder and deliver sweet justice to evil Dutch colonizers who have taken over their town.

Asian American Panorama

LATE LIFE: THE CHIEN-MING WANG STORY

Former New York Yankees pitcher and “Pride of Taiwan,” Chien-Ming Wang, finds himself without a job in Major League Baseball while struggling to come back after years of injuries. He works to regain his form to make one final push to pitch again at baseball’s highest level.

Masters

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…

Asia Pop!

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.

Masters

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…

Discoveries

FATHER TO SON

Taiwan’s emerald alleyways and small town merchants are the backdrop for this meditative drama intertwining several families with a mysterious past. Upon learning of his illness, rugged inventor Van Pao-te brings his son to Japan in search of the father who abandoned him as a young child, an event which…

Asian American Panorama

LATE LIFE: THE CHIEN-MING WANG STORY

Former New York Yankees pitcher and “Pride of Taiwan,” Chien-Ming Wang, finds himself without a job in Major League Baseball while struggling to come back after years of injuries. He works to regain his form to make one final push to pitch again at baseball’s highest level.

Special Presentations

MOON FASCINATING, BIRD SWEET

CELLULOID JUKEBOX This program features two of director Richard Chen’s landmark films of youth in Taiwan. A newly-restored print of his documentary-esque short THE MOUNTAIN, about political ideals in 1960s Taiwan, made after he graduated from UCLA; and his Chiung Yao adaptation MOON FASCINATING, BIRD SWEET, about the romantic fantasies…

THE MOUNTAIN

As Richard Chen Yao-chi was finishing his film degree at UCLA, he returned to Taiwan to direct this pathbreaking short documentary featuring three college students shooting the breeze in the mountains of Hsinchu, shedding light on 1960s youth and their thoughts on art, the Vietnam War, and their place in…

Discoveries

TEN YEARS TAIWAN

Cloaked in poetic sci-fi, mockumentary and high style, five up-and-coming filmmakers depict in futuristic terms the fallout from the pressing issues of Taiwan today - from media-driven morality, nuclear waste, rural poverty, transpacific labor, and a generation hazily opting out.

Special Presentations

THE TRAIN HAMASEN

VIRTUAL REALITY Overlapping various eras and bringing together different corners of ethnic life, this innovative VR piece is a dreamy palimpsest of Taiwanese history.

Special Presentations

YOUR SPIRITUAL TEMPLE SUCKS

VIRTUAL REALITY Traditional beliefs and new technologies clash in this hilarious short about a man who's told by his spiritual guardian to tidy up his life to save his marriage.

Asia Pop!

XIAO MEI

Nine points of view filmed as nine different genres make up this ambitious portrait of a young elusive drug addict living in a kaleidoscopic Taipei. Splashy and visually sumptuous, the film’s whodunnit of missing identity juggles film noir, action, and PSAs, slyly suggesting film’s own unreliable and multiple personalities.

Special Presentations

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 makgeolli.

Special Presentations

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…