Fresh from its Cannes premiere, Jung Byoung-gil’s The Villainess will close the 16th edition of the New York Asian Film Festival which returns to the city from 30th June to 16th July 2017. Thailand’s Bad Genius will open the festival while the Centrepiece Gala will showcase one of the best recent films from the Philippines, Mikhail Red’s Birdshot. Altogether there are 57 films included in this year’s lineup hailing from China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, The Philippines, Vietnam, and Malaysia. The full lineup is as follows:
China
Thrillers dominate the Chinese slate beginning with:
- Battle of Memories – a sci-fi thriller in which a man erases memories of his failed marriage only for his soon to be ex-wife to order him to retrieve them, only he accidentally ends up with the memories of a serial killer instead.
- Blood of Youth – a youthful cyber thriller.
- Duckweed – Han Han’s time travel drama sees a son finally getting to know his petty gangster father.
- Extraordinary Mission – Alan Mak teams up with Anthony Pun for another undercover cop action fest.
- Someone to Talk to – Yulin Liu’s adaptation of her father’s novel examines the essential loneliness of Chinese society as reflected in the modern marriage. Review.
- Soul on a String – Zhang Yang returns with an existential epic taking place in the Tibetan deserts. Review.
Hong Kong Panorama
2017 marks 20 years since the Hong Kong handover and the New York Asian Film Festival not only showcases some of the best HK films from the past two decades but also includes a look forward with work from the most promising voices of tomorrow.
- Cold War 2 – Sequel to the original Cold War, Cold War 2 sees Aaron Kwok return as Hong Kong’s incorruptible police chief still dealing with the aftermath of uncovering mass corruption and with a team of missing policemen still held captive. Review.
- Dealer/Healer – Sean Lau and Gordon Lam co-star in a ’70s crime drama.
- Election – Jonnie To’s 2005 classic needs no introduction but stars Simon Yam in a tale of raw gangster ambition.
- Mad World – Shawn Yue and Eric Tsang star in a moving tale of a father trying to understand his son’s bipolar depression.
- Our Time Will Come – Ann Hui tells the story of legendary World War II resistance operative “Fang Gu”.
- Soul Mate – Derek Tsang’s moving melodrama is an ode to the power of female friendship. Review.
- The Taking of Tiger Mountain – Tsui Hark’s tale of civil war banditry.
- This is not what I Expected – Romantic comedy starring Takeshi Kaneshiro and Zhou Dongyu
- Vampire Cleanup Department – A young man discovers his vampire hunter heritage at the same time as falling for a vampire in this retro horror comedy.
- With Prisoners – A young man gets into a fight and is sent to a notorious juvenile detention centre practicing extreme, hard-line “rehabilitative” techniques in Andrew Wong’s drama. Official competition.
- Zombiology: Enjoy Yourself Tonight – Two slackers decide to do their civic duty when the zombie apocalypse strikes.
Japan
A varied lineup from Japan features everything from the Roman Porno reboot to LGBT comedy, quirky sc-fi, and moving family drama.
- Aroused by Gymnopedies – Isao Yukisada’s entry into the Roman Porno reboot series stars Itsuji Itao as a penniless filmmaker who makes use of the various women in his life to try and improve his dismal circumstances.
- Close-Knit – less quirky than Ogigami’s other work, Close-Knit is a beautiful family drama in which a neglected little girl finds a family she can feel a part of with her uncle and his transgender girlfriend. Review.
- Dawn of the Felines – Directed by Koji Shiraishi, this Roman Porno reboot takes inspiration from Night of the Felines but casts its three heroines into a much darker world. Review.
- Destruction Babies – Tetsuya Mariko paints a grim picture of his nation’s youth in this hard-hitting, nihilistic drama. Review.
- A Double Life – This impressive debut feature from Yoshiyuki Kishi takes a long look at voyeurism and the damaging effects of obsession. Official Competition. Review.
- Happiness – Sabu’s indie leaning sci-fi drama is a meditation on guilt, memory, vengeance and the true nature of happiness. Review.
- Japanese Girls Never Die – Daigo Matsui adapts Mariko Yamauchi’s novel in which a young woman goes missing and prompts a citywide movement.
- The Long Excuse – Miwa Nishikawa adapts her own novel in which a self-centred former novelist turned B-list celebrity is forced to re-examine himself following his wife’s death. Review.
- Love and Other Cults – Eiji Uchida’s latest tells a depressing story of misused and misdirected love. Review.
- Mole Song: Hong Kong Capriccio – Takashi Miike and undercover cop Reiji are back with more improbably zany action.
- Rage – Lee Sang-il adapts another Shuichi Yoshida novel examining three interconnected stories of suspicion following a brutal Tokyo murder.
- Suffering of Ninko – A buddhist monk tries his best to remain celibate, but he’s just too pretty. Review.
- Survival Family – When the power suddenly goes off one ordinary family takes to the road but finds it much harder than they expected in Shinobu Yaguchi’s absurd comedy. Review.
- Traces of Sin – Kei Ishikawa’s dark crime drama stars Satoshi Tsumabuki as a depressed reporter tying to avoid his sister’s incarceration for child neglect by investigating the brutal murder of the ideal family. Review.
- Wet Woman in the Wind – a writer retreats to the country only to run into a nymphomaniac waitress in Akihiro Shiota’s Roman Porno reboot.
Korea
Cyber crime, fantasy, and gentle whimsy mingle in an eclectic selection from Korea.
- Fabricated City – A young man is framed for a brutal murder in this impressively designed cyber thriller. Review.
- Fantasy of the Girls – Romantic confusion plagues a production of Romeo and Juliet in this high school drama.
- Jane – A hit in Busan, Jane follows a transgender woman who takes in homeless kids. Official Competition.
- Ordinary Person – Kim Bong-han’s drama stars Son Hyun-joo as a hardworking policeman who gets caught up in a conspiracy.
- A Quiet Dream – Zhang Lu’s gently ephemeral meditation on dislocation. Review.
- A Single Rider – Lee Byung-hun stars as a bankrupt fund manager discovering some uncomfortable secrets when making an impromptu visit to his wife and son in Australia.
- Split – Drama in which an autistic boy’s talent for bowling is exploited by an unscrupulous couple who later come to care for him.
- The Tooth and the Nail – A man is accused of murdering his chauffeur in this post-war mystery.
- The Truth Beneath – a politician’s daughter goes missing during a campaign and her mother will stop at nothing to find out what happened. Review.
- Vanishing Time: A Boy Who Returned – Uhm Tae-hwa’s time slip drama is a beautifully designed tribute to childhood friendship. Review.
- The Villainess – Fresh from its Cannes premiere, Jung Byung-gil’s The Villainess will close the festival and follows an undercover assassin torn between two men from her past.
Southeast Asia
Casting the net wider the festival will also showcase some of the best recent hits from underrepresented areas of Asia:
- Bad Genius – The opening night gala, Bad Genius sees a group of super smart students earning extra money by cheating on tests set off on a mission to Australia to get the answers to the big exam and send them back to Thailand before their friends sit it. Official Competition.
- Birdshot – A series of horrifying crimes are revealed when a Philippine Eagle is shot by mistake in Mikhail Red’s mystery drama. Official Competition.
- Kfc – Vietnamese body horror from Le Binh Giang. Official Competition.
- Mrs. K – A former assassin attempts to save her husband and daughter from the legacy of her own past in this Malaysian action drama starring Kara Hui.
- Saving Sally – Unusual romantic comedy from the Philippines mixing live action and animation.
- Town in a Lake – The secrets of a small town are exposed when a young girl is murdered in Jet Leyco’s Philippine drama.
Taiwan
Pick your poison – monsters, gangsters and love dominate the entries from Taiwan.
- Eternal Summer – LGBT drama in which the intense friendship between two boys is thrown into confusion when a girl arrives from the city.
- The Gangster’s Daughter – Unusual family drama in which a gangster resumes custody of his estranged daughter and brings her to the city from her rural home. Official Competition.
- Godspeed – Black comedy in which a drug dealer gets derailed by a well-meaning taxi driver.
- Mon Mon Mon Monsters – Horrible kids catch a strange creature and then torture it before hastening the apocalypse in Ko Gidden’s provocative teen horror/comedy.
- Road to Mandalay – Two migrants fall in love on the way to Bangkok but find their romance frustrated by the difficulties of city life in Midi Z’s indie drama.
- The Village of No Return – New Year action comedy which takes place in an isolated village where the population has had its memory wiped so the people can live “happily”.
Documentaries
Only two documentaries on offer this year, both from Korea:
- Bamseom Pirates Seoul Inferno – Jung Yoon-suk’s second documentary centres on the titular Korean punk bank but uses them as a springboard to explore youthful resistance in modern Korean society.
- Mrs. B., A North Korean Woman – Jero Yun’s documentary follows its protagonist over three years as she tries to build a life for herself after being (unintentionally) trafficked out of North Korea.
The 16th New York Asian Film Festival runs from 30th June to 16th July 2017 at Film Society’s Walter Reade Theater and SVA Theatre, and will also welcome a number of high-profile guests including veteran HK actor Tony Leung Ka-fai who will receive the 2017 Star Asia NYAFF Lifetime Achievement Award, Korean actor Gang Dong-won who will receive the Star Asia Award, and Thai actress Chutimon “Aokbab” Chuengcharoensukying who will receive the Screen International Rising Star Asia Award. Tickets for the festival will be available to the public from 15th June but members of Film Society or Subway Cinema are entitled to priority booking from June 13.
You can find all the latest information on the official website, Facebook page, and Twitter feed.
Back in the day, lucha libre-style wrestling was hugely popular in Japan. Tiger Mask, a manga set in the world of Japanese pro-wrestling remains a firm favourite and its eponymous hero has also become a byword for altruistic philanthropy as well-meaning anonymous donors donate expensive gifts such as Japanese school backpacks to orphanages in Tiger Mask’s name. Sadly, pro-wrestling is no longer as high-profile as it once was and has left mainstream television screens far behind even if it still maintains a small but dedicated fanbase. Kohei Taniguchi’s Dynamite Wolf (おっさんのケーフェイ, Ossan no Kefei) is out to change all that by shining a spotlight on this almost forgotten phenomenon of crazy outfits, killer moves, and camp showmanship.
Around halfway through Poolsideman (プールサイドマン), the director himself playing an overly chatty colleague of the film’s protagonist, embarks on a lengthy rant about encroaching middle-age which is instantly relatable to those who find themselves at a similar juncture. He’s sure the world seemed better when he was a child, there wasn’t all of this distress and anxiety – everything just seemed like it would go on forever but time has inexplicably sped up with a series of rapid changes packed into recent years. The life of a poolsideman is improbably intense, or at least it is for Mizuhara (Gaku Imamura) whose days are all the same but filled with tension and the low simmer of something waiting to explode. Loosely inspired by the real life case of a man who left Japan for the Middle East with the idea of joining Isis, Poolsideman wants to explore why such a surreal thing might happen but finds it all too plausible.
Now in its fifth year, Toronto’s Japanese Film Festival is back with another excellent selection of recent and classic cinema hits. Expanded to include a few extra guests and even more movies, the festival runs from 8th – 28th June and will also boast an appearance by one of Japan’s best loved actors, Joe Odagiri, who will introduce both Her Love Boils Bathwater and Over the Fence.
The festival kicks off with a screening of 
Masaharu Fukuyama stars as a jaded paparazzo rediscovering his photojournalist mojo in Hitoshi One’s oddly moving satire of the gutter press, 
Romantic dreams so often turn to nightmares, but rarely with the blood soaked fury of Keisuke Yoshida’s 
Ai Hashimoto and Aoi Miyazaki star as a mother and daughter cruelly separated by fate in Yasuhiro Yoshida’s family melodrama, 
Part one of Norihiro Koizumi’s Karuta themed drama 
A sequel to Samurai Hustle, 
Inspired by the hit TV show, Master is headed to the big screen in the 
A highlight of this year’s programme, Tai Kato’s little seen and recently restored documentary 
A big winner at this year’s Japan Academy Prize, 
One of two films recently released by Nobuhiro Yamashita, 
Haruka Ayase stars in 
Comedian Yo Oizumi plays an aspiring mangaka with big dreams and possibly deluded hopes who finally discovers the power of his ordinariness during the zombie apocalypse in Shinsuke Sato’s blockbuster action/comedy 
Yoji Yamada reunites with the cast of Tokyo Family and a few more old friends for another tale of humorous family drama, 
Japan’s housing estates were once symbols of post-war aspiration but now they’re largely deserted and home only to elderly residents prepared to put up with cramped conditions, no lifts, and basic amenities. Junji Sakamoto returns with a surreal comedy satirising everything from gossipy village mentality to alien invasion in the warmhearted if wistful 
Two sisters return to their family home which is about to be torn down only to find a collection of recipes left behind by their late Taiwanese mother who died twenty years before in Mitsuhito Shiraha’s food/family drama, 
Godzilla is back and bigger than ever in Hideaki Anno & Shinji Higuchi’s 
When all the power suddenly goes off, one ordinary family is forced to flee the city in search of life on the land but how do you cope with the apocalypse when you’re used to 24hr convenience and efficient public services? Hilariously, according to Shinobu Yaguchi’s latest comedy drama, 
Another in the long line of movies focussing on samurai who fight with things other than katana, 
A sequel to the hit TV Drama, 
Lee Sang-il adapts another Shuichi Yoshida novel for three interconnected tales of doubt and suspicion following an unsolved, brutal Tokyo murder in 
Award winning animation 
The ninja aren’t up for Oda Nobunaga’s plans to create a peaceful Japan under his control so they’re up to all their secretive tricks in Yoshihiro Nakamura’s epic jidaigeki, 
Times change so quickly. The “danchi” was a symbol of post-war aspiration and rising economic prosperity as it sought to give young professionals an affordable yet modern, convenient way of life. The term itself is a little hard to translate though loosely enough just means a housing estate but unlike “The Projects” (団地, Danchi) of the title, these are generally not areas of social housing or lower class neighbourhoods but a kind of vertical village which one should never need to leave (except to go to work) as they also include all the necessary amenities for everyday life from shops and supermarkets to bars and restaurants. Nevertheless, aspirations change across generations and what was once considered a dreamlike promise of futuristic convenience now seems run down and squalid. Cramped apartments with tiny rooms, washing machines on the balconies, no lifts – young people do not see these things as convenient and so the danchi is mostly home to the older generation, downsizers, or the down on their luck.
Taiwan and Japan have a complicated history, but in SABU’s latest slice of cross-cultural interplay each place becomes a kind of refuge from the other. Working largely in Mandarin and with Taiwanese star Chang Chen, SABU returns to a familiar story – the lonely hitman tempted by a normal family life filled with peace and simplicity only to have his dreams taken from him by the spectre of his past. Only this time it isn’t just his past but that of others too. Despite the melancholy air, Mr. Long (ミスター・ロン) is a testament to the power of simple human kindness but also a condemnation of underworld cruelty and its vicelike grip on all who enter its grasp.
Tsugumi Ohba and Takashi Obata’s Death Note manga has already spawned three live action films, an acclaimed TV anime, live action TV drama, musical, and various other forms of media becoming a worldwide phenomenon in the process. A return to cinema screens was therefore inevitable – Death Note: Light up the NEW World (デスノート Light up the NEW World) positions itself as the first in a possible new strand of the ongoing franchise, casting its net wider to embrace a new, global world. Directed by Shinsuke Sato – one of the foremost blockbuster directors in Japan responsible for Gantz, 
Parks are a common feature of modern city life – a stretch of green among the grey, but it’s important to remember that there has not always been such beautiful shared space set aside for public use. Natsuki Seta’s light and breezy youth comedy, Parks (PARKS パークス), was commissioned in celebration of the centenary of the Tokyo park where the majority of the action takes place, Inokashira. Mixing early Godardian whimsy with new wave voice over and the kind of innocent adventure not seen since the Kadokawa idol days, Parks is a sometimes melancholy, wistful tribute to a place where chance meetings can define lifetimes as well as to brief yet memorable summers spent with gone but not forgotten friends doing something which seems important but which in retrospect may be trivial.
Taiwanese dark comedy crime thriller 
Needing little introduction, 
Lee Sang-il reunites with Unforgiven’s Ken Watanabe and enlists an all star cast including, Kenichi Matsuyama, Aoi Miyazaki, Chizuru Ikewaki, Satoshi Tsumabuki, Go Ayano, Mirai Moriyama, and Suzu Hirose for 
Kiki Sugino brings a modern twist to the classic tale of the 
Kyoko Miyake’s documentary 
Takashi Miike never stops! 
Playing in the Night Moves section, Dante Lam’s 
A return to the classic Hong Kong horror comedies of the past, 
When tragedy strikes the one thing you ought to be able to rely on is your family, but when the tragedy occurs within that sacred space which exits between you what is to be done? Yosuke Takeuchi’s The Sower (種をまく人, Tane wo Maku Hito) attempts to provide an answer whilst putting one very ordinary, loving and forgiving family through a series of tests and tragedies. Lies, regret, and despair conspire to ruin the lives of four once happy people but even in the midst of such a shocking, unexpected event there is still time to turn towards the sun rather than continuing in the darkness.
Windows on Worlds 