Special Presentations

BAD AXE

David Siev and his siblings grew up in Bad Axe, Michigan, home of two main stoplights, cornfields, and his family’s restaurant. When the pandemic hit, they all moved back home to help their parents navigate their COVID-era business. Forever a filmmaker, David keeps his camera on sisters looking out for…

Special Presentations

WISDOM GONE WILD

In this masterwork of a career-long investigation into collective memory, Rea Tajiri (Strawberry Fields) partners with her mother, Rose Tajiri Noda, diagnosed with dementia at the age of 76. A duet of both care and creation, WISDOM GONE WILD chronicles Rose’s transformation of self while sprawling across time, as Rose’s…

Special Presentations

RICEBOY SLEEPS

In Anthony Shim’s emotionally layered second feature, RICEBOY SLEEPS, So-young and her young son Dong-hyun leave behind family tragedy in South Korea for a new life—and new dreams—in Canada. Encountering the isolation and alienation of being outsiders in a strange country, a distance grows between them. “A man can only…

Special Presentations

NURSE UNSEEN

Invisible yet ever-present, anonymous yet indispensable. For over six decades, Filipino nurses have been at the frontlines of the American medical establishment, but their stories remain in the background. Emmy-winning director Michele Josue fills in this critical history and questions the human costs of indifference. Tracing a story that begins…

Asian American Panorama

80 YEARS LATER

Eighty years following the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII, two cousins who were interned during the war discuss its lingering effects. Filmmaker Celine Parreñas Shimizu’s second feature delicately interrogates the ways in which we confront history and inherited trauma.

Asian American Panorama

CHOSEN

In 2020, for the first time ever, five Korean Americans ran for U.S. Congress in the same year. Meet David Kim, a young LGBTQ progressive in Koreatown, Los Angeles; Marilyn Strickland, a Black Korean centrist Democrat in Tacoma, WA; Young Kim and Michelle Park Steel, Republicans in Orange County; and…

Asian American Panorama

CROSSINGS

Veteran documentarian Deann Borshey Liem (First Person Plural) joins a group of 30 women who dare to walk across the DMZ—an invisible line separating North and South Korea and the most militarized border in the world. Their simple plan triggers a media storm, fraught brinkmanship, and a fascinating look at…

Asian American Panorama

DECOUPLING

After the birth of their daughter, Chinese international students Yinan and Yujing decide to have their 11-month-old baby travel to China with her grandparents. Little did they know that a pandemic would soon strike, U.S.-China relations would worsen, and they would be stranded in Wisconsin, parenting from afar and filming…

Asian American Panorama

FOUR SAMOSAS

Executing a heist of the local cash & carry with three hair-brained conspirators so you can steal your ex-girlfriend’s dowry before she marries a dweeb—what could possibly go wrong? Miss India America director Ravi Kapoor spins such a caper as a stylish Little India Bottle Rocket, with a poppin’ cast…

Asian American Panorama

LIQUOR STORE DREAMS

In her documentary feature debut, filmmaker So Yun Um knits her identity as a “liquor store baby” with the fraught history of Korean-run liquor stores in Los Angeles. Through a deeply personal exploration of tensions between Black and Korean communities, So offers a loving portrait of intergenerational healing.

Asian American Panorama

OCEAN CITY MONSTER BUILDING

Bucking the trend of glossy true crime, director Chris Lane applies a raw and surreal technique to this story of murder in 1984 upstate New York. As investigator Aida Pierre begins poking around the deaths of a former mayor and a 15-year-old girl, she opens wounds and rifts in an…

Asian American Panorama

THERAPY DOGS

From the youngest filmmaker to premiere at Slamdance, THERAPY DOGS is an electrifying feature shot undercover as a “yearbook” video. Adrenaline and angst fuel two giddily miserable best friends who film their last year at a Canadian high school with nary an adult in sight. Terrifying antics and promposals at…

Asia Pop!

AND STILL I SING

What happens when singing becomes forbidden? Two women on an Afghan TV singing competition hope to defy the odds with a first-ever female winner. As they ride the rollercoaster of rehearsals, hate mail, and possible victory, the Taliban takeover in 2021 upends life as they know it. Starring the magnificent…

Asia Pop!

DECLARATION

Mahesh Narayanan’s Malayalam-language drama follows a woman from Kerala working with her husband in a glove factory near New Delhi. Hoping for a brighter future abroad, but set back by an illicitly captured phone video, Reshmi must overcome the misogynistic forces that threaten her fate.

Asia Pop!

DETECTIVE VS. SLEUTHS

Bodies litter the streets, and they all turn out to be suspects from cold cases abandoned long ago. Who would have the inside track to “solve” these old murders? And what do they have to do with the mysterious Lee, a former top cop now cast off as a madman…

Asia Pop!

FAST & FEEL LOVE

In the sport of speed stacking, Kao is king. Thanks to his razor-sharp precision, obsessive work ethic, and supportive girlfriend Jay, he’s now the world’s fastest. But Jay’s had enough of being treated like the house butler, and when she bails, Kao must learn to do his own damn chores,…

Asia Pop!

THE FISH TALE

Loosely based on the life of celebrity marine biologist Sakana-kun, THE FISH TALE follows Meebo, who pursues a childhood dream of becoming a fish expert. High style with splashes of the surreal, the film is an homage to sea life, otherworldly and enchanting, much like Meebo.

Asia Pop!

GAGA

Eldest brother’s decision to run for local office hits a snag when an unexpected pregnancy rocks his family and threatens to become the talk of town. GAGA is an affable domestic comedy about protecting one’s ancestral land, maintaining tradition across generations, and standing up for family, directed by Taiwan’s first…

Asia Pop!

LESSON IN MURDER

College student Masaya receives a letter that disturbs and tantalizes him. It’s from a famous serial killer now in prison, but once a kind baker at a shop Masaya frequented as a teen. Masaya is tempted enough to visit the killer, who asks Masaya for an unusual favor. With shades…

Asia Pop!

MAMA BOY

The cute but awkward Hong can’t be forced into love. Not by his mom who tries to set him up on blind dates. Not by his cousin who thinks the ladies of the sex motel are the answer. But when Hong develops the most innocent crush on a brothel madame…

Asia Pop!

MAMA’S AFFAIR

Before marriage and motherhood, Mei-fung was a starmaker: a talent manager with an ear for hits and an eye for new idols. Now that her son is entering adulthood and her husband has exited fidelity, Mei-fung decides to stage a comeback, especially when she stumbles upon a teenager with an…

Asia Pop!

MILLIE LIES LOW

En route to a prestigious internship in New York, Millie has a panic attack and ditches her flight. Stranded and low on funds, she must figure out food, shelter, and how to get a new ticket, all without letting anyone know she hasn’t actually left. That’s okay—Millie has a cellphone,…

Asia Pop!

THE NARROW ROAD

For two Hong Kongers, the pandemic breeds opportunity. For Chak, it’s turning his cleaning business into a disinfection service. For Candy, getting a job as Chak’s right hand means food on the table for her 7-year-old. As partners, they teeter on the narrow road to happiness—on one side the desire…

Asia Pop!

STELLAR: A MAGICAL RIDE

When a sports car under his watch disappears, Young-bae finds himself on the run from gangsters. Or more like on the crawl. All he has is his late father’s busted ol’ jalopy, which, it turns out, has more in the tank than meets the eye. It’s the fast vs. the…

Asia Pop!

SUBTRACTION

Farzaneh swears she sees her husband on a bus. She secretly follows him to his destination: an apartment building where she suspects he’s having an affair. Was it him, or was she, as her doctor suggests, having pregnancy hallucinations? Director Mani Haghighi spins a Hitchcockian urban thriller of what-ifs and…

Asia Pop!

TOO COOL TO KILL

In this movie-in-a-movie comedy, a background actor with thespian dreams accepts the role of a lifetime: hitman in a gangster film, co-starring the top big-screen starlet. Little does he know that there is no film in the camera, the bullets are real, and the movie villain is an actual mob…

Asia Pop!

WE ARE STILL HERE

Indigenous filmmakers in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand interweave multiple stories about colonialism, war, and apocalypses past and present.

Masters

BEFORE, NOW & THEN

During the political upheaval of 1960s Indonesia, Nana loses the man she loves. While he continues to linger in her dreams and memories, Nana settles down with a wealthy new husband, in whose home she finds an unlikely confidant. Kamila Andini (Yuni) returns with a ravishing, award-winning drama of period…

Masters

BROKER

A young woman leaves her baby at a church drop box, which turns out to be an intake for child traffickers. In a playful turn of events, she goes on the road with the bumbling baby brokers as they find her unwanted child a new home, while the cops tail…

Masters

THE NOVELIST’S FILM

Spurned by filmmaking years ago, a novelist later in her life is re-seduced by the form—with all the drinking, awkwardness, and charm you’d expect from a seduction. A bewitching Lee Hye-young joins Hong Sang-soo all-stars Kwon Hae-hyo and Kim Min-hee in a beautiful, disarmingly simple reconsideration of cinema.

Masters

SEPTET: THE STORY OF HONG KONG

Seven short films directed by a dream team of Hong Kong legends, SEPTET takes us through the decades, from coming-of-age as students in the 1950s and 60s, to finding one’s bearings in the uncertain years that followed. SEPTET is a sentimental tribute to a city, its history, its people, and…

Masters

WALK UP

Hong Sang-soo has a way of making life seem like a never-ending series of rhythms and reverberations. This can be both an intoxicating and maddening notion, which is exactly the strange formal dichotomy his new film WALK UP considers. A famous film director visits an old friend (or flame?), only…

Masters

WHAT ABOUT CHINA?

Trinh T. Minh-ha (Surname Viet Given Name Nam) revisits footage shot in rural China in 1993, reframed against the industrialization and urbanization of the past thirty years. Sprawling and sonically mesmerizing, WHAT ABOUT CHINA?’s citational poetics probe China’s contradicting representations, histories, and futures.

Masters

WHEN THE WAVES ARE GONE

It’s cop vs. cop in Lav Diaz’s latest: a dark, protracted tale of vengeance and crushing cycles of violence. Hermes is a top investigator, so principled that he once sent his own teacher to prison. Now, the atrocities he’s witnessed and perpetuated are literally mangling his flesh, and a ghost…

Unknown Pleasures

ALL THAT BREATHES

Two Muslim brothers struggle to maintain their sanctuary for birds in smog-filled Delhi, facing financial difficulties and a looming backdrop of government-sanctioned Hindu nationalism. Winner of the L'Œil d’or at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival.

Unknown Pleasures

BLUE ISLAND

Through a mix of interviews, archival footage, and reenactment, recent protests for self-determination are knitted into Hong Kong’s long history of political action. Beyond simplistic cries for Hong Kong identity, BLUE ISLAND conjures a forgotten history to explore the cultural contradictions, intergenerational resonances, and passions for freedom that remain insuppressible.

Unknown Pleasures

GYEONG-AH’S DAUGHTER

When Yeon-su spurns her ex-boyfriend’s advances one last time, he retaliates by texting their sex video to all of her loved ones—including her mother who did not even know she was in a relationship. Yeon-su is sent into hiding, reconnecting with a mother who has secrets of her own.

Unknown Pleasures

THE HILL OF SECRETS

Determined to be better than her crude, tight-fisted family, 12-year-old Myung-eun decides to run for class president and enter a series of writing contests—all while lying about where she comes from. When her ambition requires her to hurt her family, however, she must make a difficult choice.

Unknown Pleasures

MYANMAR DIARIES

In 2021, a Burmese woman livestreams a workout class, inadvertently documenting the moments the military overthrows its civilian government behind her. From the anonymous Myanmar Film Collective, MYANMAR DIARIES is a remarkable blend of citizen journalist footage and fictional enactments of everyday life, a portrait of hope and resistance under…

Unknown Pleasures

REMEMBER ME

Just off the coast of China is Kinmen, a heavily-fortified set of islands governed from afar by Taiwan. A remnant of Taiwan’s past aspirations to “take back the mainland,” Kinmen may now be best known as a tourist curiosity. But REMEMBER ME introduces us to folks who live there, perpetually…

Unknown Pleasures

SHOEBOX

A daughter returns home to care for her ailing father, when the independent theater that he’s run for decades is threatened to be shut down by a power-hungry politician's development project. A solemn film about the things we hold onto amidst contemporary society’s rapid changes.

Unknown Pleasures

STONEWALLING

Lynn has big plans for learning English and becoming a flight attendant. Having a baby with her unreliable boyfriend is not what she had in mind. An opportunity emerges to relinquish her unwanted baby while saving her mother’s troubled business, but the market for human life is never as it…

Classics Restored

A CONFUCIAN CONFUSION

Taiwanese filmmaker Edward Yang skewers modern Taipei culture through a satirical lens with A CONFUCIAN CONFUSION, rarely seen since its premiere at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival. Like so many Yang films, it's a witty, nuanced, and cutting piece that deals with the anxieties of tradition, corporate greed, and pervasive…

Classics Restored

GIRL’S SCHOOL

From one of Taiwan’s pioneering women directors comes the high school drama of Chih-Ting and Chia-Lin, best friends and maybe more, stirring rumors in class that they might be lesbians. Straddling the romantic buoyancy of 1970s melodramas and the gentle naturalism of the Taiwan New Cinema to come, GIRL’S SCHOOL…

Classics Restored

THE HEROIC TRIO

Icons Michelle Yeoh, Maggie Cheung, and Anita Mui put the X in latex in this newly restored, quintessentially gonzo Hong Kong 90s blockbuster from a young Johnnie To. Kung fu mayhem, flying motorcycles, maniacal laughter, baby-nappers, baby-cannibals, and a whole lot more thrill in this triumph of the superheroines.

Classics Restored

EXECUTIONERS

Made right on the heels of The Heroic Trio, EXECUTIONERS reunites the whole gang of glamorous superheroines Michelle Yeoh, Maggie Cheung, and Anita Mui. With a distinctly darker, high-90s-Terminator aesthetic, this rarity feels like it could only exist on a bootleg VHS, but we have it in beautifully restored 4K.

SHORTS: DISCOMFORT FOOD

Films that spice up the trope of food as a love language.

SHORTS: DUTY FREE

An eclectic mix of liminal and liberatory stories, starring a caretaker of corpses, anarchic animations, and stranded translators.

SHORTS: FOR THE RECORD

Urgent and timely entries to the historical record.

SHORTS: EXT. SENSORIUM

These shorts use the force of sound to mesmerize, lull, and transport their viewer to other realms of the heart and imagination.

SHORTS: INT. ECHOPLEX

Films that retrieve elliptical histories from unruly archives, remixing the echoes and artifacts of all that’s left behind.

SHORTS: NOWHERE, FOREVER

Films that toss their viewers in a time-and-space salad, mixing riddles of paradox with near (and nearly familiar) futures.

SHORTS: MAKING IT

A love letter and behind-the-curtain peek at the lives of artists, the making of art, and the unmaking of the very shapes we create it in.

SHORTS: HOME BOUND

Stories about inescapable tethers to the ties that bind.

SHORTS: PRESSURE POINTS

There isn’t one edge of the world, there are many—some in far off lands and some inside our skin.

SHORTS: GENERATION QUEER

From a quest for love to a bear of a lifestyle, these 6 shorts explore the diverse journeys of the queer experience.

SHORTS: ELSEWHERE, WITHIN HERE

Films about boundaries, borders, beginnings, and endings, and living in the elsewhen in the here and now.

SHORTS: REEL VOICES

Introducing 12 fresh perspectives from our Reel Voices documentary filmmaking program.

SHORTS: TO LIVE AND DIE IN TAIPEI

The two most acclaimed recent shorts from Taiwan are accompanied by a diptych from one of the world’s greatest living filmmakers.

Classics Restored

GIRL’S SCHOOL

From one of Taiwan’s pioneering women directors comes the high school drama of Chih-Ting and Chia-Lin, best friends and maybe more, stirring rumors in class that they might be lesbians. Straddling the romantic buoyancy of 1970s melodramas and the gentle naturalism of the Taiwan New Cinema to come, GIRL’S SCHOOL…

SHORTS: TO LIVE AND DIE IN TAIPEI

The two most acclaimed recent shorts from Taiwan are accompanied by a diptych from one of the world’s greatest living filmmakers.

Unknown Pleasures

REMEMBER ME

Just off the coast of China is Kinmen, a heavily-fortified set of islands governed from afar by Taiwan. A remnant of Taiwan’s past aspirations to “take back the mainland,” Kinmen may now be best known as a tourist curiosity. But REMEMBER ME introduces us to folks who live there, perpetually…

Asia Pop!

GAGA

Eldest brother’s decision to run for local office hits a snag when an unexpected pregnancy rocks his family and threatens to become the talk of town. GAGA is an affable domestic comedy about protecting one’s ancestral land, maintaining tradition across generations, and standing up for family, directed by Taiwan’s first…

Asia Pop!

MAMA BOY

The cute but awkward Hong can’t be forced into love. Not by his mom who tries to set him up on blind dates. Not by his cousin who thinks the ladies of the sex motel are the answer. But when Hong develops the most innocent crush on a brothel madame…

Classics Restored

A CONFUCIAN CONFUSION

Taiwanese filmmaker Edward Yang skewers modern Taipei culture through a satirical lens with A CONFUCIAN CONFUSION, rarely seen since its premiere at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival. Like so many Yang films, it's a witty, nuanced, and cutting piece that deals with the anxieties of tradition, corporate greed, and pervasive…