Across Asia
From Lav Diaz’s “hauntingly beautiful” epic FROM WHAT IS BEFORE, to Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s “spine-tingling” CREEPY, to two-time Palme d’Or winner Shohei Imamura’s existential essay A MAN VANISHES, to the newly added Sri Lankan drama GAADI - CHILDREN OF THE SUN, alongside the complete filmography of Anand Patwardhan, these docs and films are politically charged and anything but formulaic… Leave your comfort zone at the door and dive in!
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Nobuhiko Obayashi's Anti-War Trilogy
3 items
In the last decade of his long and prolific career, Nobuhiko Obayashi (1938-2020) —best-known in the U.S. as the filmmaker behind the cult hit House (1977)—wrote and directed a trio of deeply personal and formally audacious films that confronted Japan’s wartime past.
Made in the wake of the Grea...
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Visible Secret (Ann Hui)
Directed by Ann Hui • Drama • With Eason Chan, Shu Qi, Anthony Wong • 2001 • 101 minutes
Spirits lurk everywhere in Ann Hui's horror-comedy, Visible Secret. Instantly infatuated by enigmatic amnesiac June (Shu Qi, Millennium Mambo) who has the ability to see spirits, Peter is swept into a world ...
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The Search (Pema Tseden)
Directed by Pema Tseden • Drama • With Zong Zhi, Manla Jiepu, Dobe Dorje, Drolma Gyab, Lumo Tso • 2013 • 105 minutes
A director, his assistant, and a businessman drive through the Amdo region of Tibet, scouring small villages to find actors for their adaptation of the namthar of Drime Kunden, an...
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Mrs. B., A North Korean Woman
Directed by Jero Yun • Documentary • 2016 • 71 minutes
"There are five kinds of families that buy us," says Mrs. B over dinner and drinks with fellow North Korean exiles living in China. "The first type, either the father or the mother is missing and the son can't get married. Then there are the...
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Adela
Directed by Adolfo Alix, Jr. • Drama • With Anita Linda, Joem Bascon, Jason Abalos • 2008 • 90 minutes
It is Adela’s 80th birthday. A former radio personality, she lives on her own in the slums of Manila. Adela is surrounded by a sea of humanity and with it their problems, successes, and trivial...
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Though I Am Gone
Directed by Hu Jie • Documentary • 2007 • 68 minutes
Pioneering filmmaker Hu Jie uncovers the tragic story of a teacher beaten to death by her students during the Cultural Revolution.
In 1966, the Cultural Revolution exploded throughout China, as Mao's Red Guards persecuted suspected Rightists....
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Myanmar Diaries
Directed by Myanmar Film Collective • Documentary • 2023 • 70 minutes
MYANMAR DIARIES is comprised of short films by ten young anonymous Burmese filmmakers, combined with emotionally harrowing citizen journalism documenting the junta’s brutality, as well as courageous resistance to it.
The film...
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The Vow from Hiroshima
Directed by Susan Strickler • Documentary • 2020 • 77 minutes
THE VOW FROM HIROSHIMA is an intimate portrait of Setsuko Thurlow, a passionate, 85-year-old survivor of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima. Her moving story is told through the lens of her growing friendship with a second generation surviv...
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Air Doll (Hirokazu Kore-eda)
Directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda • Drama • With Bae Doona, Arata Iura, Itsuji Itao • 2009 • 116 minutes
A present-day fable for the increasing disconnect we find in urban life, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Air Doll transports the Galatea myth to present day Tokyo.
A life-size sex doll (Bae Doona, The Host)...
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White Sun
Directed by Deepak Rauniyar • Drama • With Dayahang Rai, Asha Magrati, Rabindra Singh Baniya • 2016 • 89 minutes
Gorgeously lensed, WHITE SUN sensitively explores the damage done to the fabric of Nepalese society by the decade-long civil war between the Maoists and Nepal’s monarchical government...
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Rebels of the Neon God
Directed by Tsai Ming-liang • Drama • With Lee Kang-sheng • 1992 • 106 minutes
Tsai Ming-liang emerged on the world cinema scene in 1992 with his groundbreaking first feature, Rebels of the Neon God. His debut already includes a handful of elements familiar to fans of subsequent work: a deceptiv...
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Casting Blossoms to the Sky
Directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi • Drama • With Yasuko Matsuyuki, Masahiro Takashima, Natsuki Harada, • 2012 • 160 minutes
In 2011, a journalist arrives in Nagaoka, a Japanese village that underwent destruction during both World War II and the 2004 Chūetsu earthquakes, and is now notable for the f...
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Xiaogang Feng
2 items
In the late '90s, Xiaogang Feng emerged as one of Asia’s most successful commercial directors for his black comedies about the lives of common people in a rapidly changing China. In the past 15 years, his films have become more ambitious and have pushed the boundaries of Chinese cinema. He is oft...
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Detention
Directed by John Hsu • Drama • With Gingle Wang; Meng-Po Fu; Hung Chang Chu; Jing-Hua Tseng; Cecilia Choi • 2019 • 102 minutes
Set during the Taiwanese martial law of the 1960s, this shockingly gruesome and terrifying coming-of-age drama based on a hugely popular video game sees two classmates w...
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Shusenjo: Comfort Women and Japan's War on History
Directed by Miki Dezaki • Documentary • 2019 • 120 minutes
One of the most heated issues in Japan and Asia today is over something that occurred 80 years ago: the Japanese Imperial Army's sexual enslavement of an estimated tens of thousands of Korean women and others in military brothels during ...
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We Are Little Zombies
Directed by Makoto Nagahisa • Drama • With Keita Ninomiya, Mondo Okumura, Satoshi Mizuno, Sena Nakajima • 2019 • 120 minutes
When four young orphans—Hikari, Ikuko, Ishi, and Takemura—first meet, their parents’ bodies are being turned into dust, like fine Parmesan atop a plate of spaghetti Bologn...
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A Fool
Directed by Jianbin Chen • Drama • With Jianbin Chen, Jiang Qinqin, Wang Xuebing, Jin Shijia • 2014 • 97 minutes
Based on Hu Xuewen's novella "Running Moonlight", a Chinese shepherd tries to enlist help in getting his son released from prison; when a wandering stranger enters his life, diverting...
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The Long Walk
Directed by Mattie Do • Drama • With Yannawoutthi Chanthalungsy, Vilouna Phetmany, Por Silatsa • 2021 • 116 minutes
The Long Walk centers on an elderly man who has the power to travel back in time thanks to a mysterious companion whose death he witnessed 50 years earlier. With his new power, he ...
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Mariam
Directed by Sharipa Urazbayeva • Drama • With Meruert Sabbusinova • 2019 • 75 minutes
After her husband mysteriously disappears, all the hardships of survival in the cold winter period in the far away village in Kazakhstan have to be carried out by Mariam, the mother of four small kids. To save ...
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Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts
Movie + 3 extras
Directed by Mouly Surya • Drama • With Marsha Timothy • 2017 • 93 minutes
In the deserted hills of an Indonesian island, Marlina (Marsha Timothy), a young widow, is attacked and robbed of all her livestock by a gang of seven bandits. She then defends herself, setting out on a journey to find jus...
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By the Time It Gets Dark
Directed by Anocha Suwichakornpong • Drama • With Visra Vichit-Vadakan, Arak Amornsupasiri, Achtara Suwan • 2017 • 105 minutes
A shape-shifting narrative around memory, politics and cinema, the film weaves together the stories of several characters. We meet a young waitress serving breakfast at...