Poland’s Five Flavours Film Festival returns for the 11th year from 15th to 22nd November bringing with it more of the best in recent Asian cinema plus retrospectives and classic screenings. This year’s festival will open with Ann Hui’s latest epic of Hong Kong history, Our Time Will Come and Hui will also be honoured with a retrospective featuring seven more films from throughout her Career.
Portrait: Ann Hui
A giant of Hong Kong cinema, Hui began her time in the director’s chair in the late ’70s following a two year stint at the London Film School. Throughout her long and varied career which has featured both commercial and more personal cinema, Hui’s work is noted for its probing social commentary and political fearlessness.
- Our Time Will Come – Opening the festival, Hui’s latest work once again returns to the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong and to the resistance fighters who risked all to free their homeland. Review.
- The Secret – A murder mystery, Hui’s cinematic debut is inspired by a real life crime which leads its detective into an investigation of Hong Kong at a cross-roads of tradition and modernity.
- Boat People – Hui’s best known work is also among her most political in examining post-war Vietnam through the eyes of a Japanese photographer.
- Summer Snow – A humorous examination of Hong Kong’s ageing society and the developing social problems accompanying it.
- The Way We Are – a portrait of those struggling to get by in Hong Kong’s impoverished Tin Shiu Wai.
- A Simple Life – Deanie Ip’s elderly nanny/housekeeper suffers a stroke and is looked after by her employer (Andy Lau) in a moving examination of modern family ties.
Focus: Bhutan
Shining a light on a new, under appreciated film culture, Five Flavours presents a series of new films from Bhutan.
- Golden Cousin – two cousins growing up in a small village are destined for marriage but when one travels to the city for university he comes to understand the dangers of such close familial relationships.
- Hema Hema: Sing Me a Song While I Wait – every 12 years people meet in the mountains to take part in a religious cleansing ritual…
- Honeygiver Among the Dogs – A policeman investigating the disappearance of a prioress is directed to a solitary newcomer whom the villagers believe to be demonically possessed…
- In a Defiled World – Two men fall for the same girl in this modern city story.
- Norbu, My Beloved Yak – A guru and his daughter move into a village where the girl makes friends with a local boy whose best friend is a yak!
- Prophecy – a young girl studying in the city returns home to care for her sickly mother only to discover her return may not have been as unexpected as she assumed…
- The Next Guardian – an ordinary family is tested by changing times.
- Travellers and Magicians – Dondup wants to go to America but he has to travel the Himalayas to get there..
- Short films from Bhutan – collection of five short films.
Japan
- Bangkok Nites – Katsuya Tomita’s Saudade followup picks up on latent themes in the first film for another look at the destructive effects of colonialism ancient and modern. Review.
- A Bride for Rip Van Winkle – a timid school teacher is sent on a strange odyssey of self discovery in Shunji Iwai’s long awaited return to feature filmmaking. Review.
- Close-Knit – a neglected child goes to live with her uncle and his transgender girlfriend in Ogigami’s heartfelt drama. Review.
- Yamato California – Daisuke Miura’s drama examines Japanese/American relations through the story of a hip hop obsessed teen played by Hanae Kan. review.
- Vampire Hotel – feature length cut-down of Sion Sono’s nine hour vampire themed TV drama.
- Tokyo Drifter – Seijun Suzuki’s surreal gangster drama.
Roman Porno Reboot
As cinema receipts dwindled in the early 1970s, Japanese studios considered the best way to stay afloat. Nikkatsu, whose output had largely skewed towards youth drama, decided to reboot itself wholesale and embark on production of levelled up “pink film” only with better production values. 40 years later, Nikkatsu’s “Roman Porno” line has been resurrected with four films directed by four of today’s most interesting directors. Five Flavours presents two of the four reboot movies paired with an original from the 1970s.
- Dawn of the Felines – Kazuya Shirashi’s somber reworking of Night of the Felines centres around three women working in Tokyo’s red light district. Review.
- Night of the Felines – the original sex comedy from Roman Porno master Noboru Tanaka.
- Wet Woman in the Wind – a blocked writer moves to the country for a spot of peaceful contemplation only to be confronted with the persistent attentions of a nymphomaniac waitress in Akihiko Shiota’s take on the Roman Porno genre.
- Lovers are Wet – an impulsive rebel returns home in Tatsumi Kumashiro’s 1976 classic.
Korea
- The Age of Shadows – colonial era spy drama from Kim Jee-woon. Review.
China
- Crosscurrent – Poetic Chinese odyssey shot by Mark Lee Ping-bing. Review.
- Free and Easy – an unidentified body is discovered in a moribund Chinese town…
- Soul Mate – tragic story of female friendship lost and found. Review.
Hong Kong
- Mad World – an estranged father and son are brought back together when the son is released from a mental institution after treatment for bipolar disorder.
- Made in Hong Kong – Fruit Chan’s classic 1997 tale of alienated youth in its new 4K restoration.
Taiwan
- Godspeed – a down on his luck petty gangster gets in the wrong taxi in this absurd black comedy.
Thailand
- The Promise – two wealthy girls decide on a drastic solution to Thailand’s 1997 financial crisis…
Philippines
- Dark is the Night – An ordinary couple in Duterte’s Philippines take to drug trafficking to make ends meet with tragic consequences.
Indonesia
- Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts – A young widow is attacked by bandits who raid her ranch and then sets out on a quest for vengeance…
Malaysia
- Mrs. K – Kara Hui plays a former assassin whose past comes back to haunt her.
Vietnam
- KFC – arthouse leaning cannibal drama.
Five Flavours takes place in Warsaw from 15th to 22nd November 2017. More information on all the films as well as screening times and ticketing links can be found on the official website, and you can keep up to date with all the latest news via the festival’s Facebook Page, Twitter Account, Instagram, and YouTube Channels.
Wales’s premier horror festival, 
Another addition to the Meatball Machine universe, Kodoku follows a debt collector recently diagnosed with terminal cancer who realises his condition makes him immune to the mind control of invading alien Necroborgs. More splatter action from Yoshihiro Nishimura.
A group of horrible kids capture a strange creature and then mercilessly torture it in Giddens Ko’s surprising foray into the world of teen horror.
Set in 1953, 
Hee-yeon moves to a small village near Mt. Jang with her husband after their son goes missing. Bonding with a little girl who seems to be lost herself, Hee-yeon soon becomes embroiled in the strange events occurring around the mountain.
’90s neurologist Lam Sik-ka (Anthony Wong) can’t sleep. Contacted by a fellow insomniac former girlfriend, he begins investigating and finds the answer lies all the way back in the Japanese occupation…
An adaptation of the manga by Sui Ishida, Tokyo Ghoul is the story of Ken Kaneki who wakes up in hospital to discover he’s been given transplants from a “Ghoul” and is now part Ghoul himself which means he needs to eat human flesh to survive…
Students at a remote art school start mysteriously disappearing, could the creepy clay statues possibly be to blame?
Following the last series of 
Released in 2009, the second feature from Satoko Yokohama stars Kenichi Matsuyama as Yojin – an Aomori farm boy who lives on a slightly different plane of existence to everyone else. When a pretty school teacher (played by Kumiko Aso) arrives from Tokyo, Yojin becomes determined to win her heart, whatever the eventual costs may be!
Also known as Ending Note, Mami Sunada’s documentary follows the last days of her father, a lifelong salaryman who retired aged 67 only to be diagnosed with terminal cancer soon after. Realising that he had only a short time left to live, Sunada began preparing for his death, creating his own bucket list and thinking about the “ending note” (a kind of personal testament) that he would leave behind for his family.
Miwa Nishikawa whose 
Directly after the screening of Wild Berries, there will be a panel discussion examining the rise of female filmmakers over the last 15 years. Chaired by Kate Taylor – East Asian programmer for the BFI London Film Festival, the panel will also feature film scholar Jasper Sharp (co-founder of Midnight Eye, author of Behind the Pink Curtain), film researcher Alejandra Armendáriz Hernández, and the season’s curator, Irene Silvera.
The latest in a series of events marking the 20th anniversary of the Hong Kong handover, 
The latest instalment in Wilson Yip’s SPL series stars Louis Koo as a Hong Kong cop on a mission to rescue his daughter from Thai kidnappers. Co-star Gordon Lam will be in attendance to present the film’s UK premiere.
Ann Hui’s 1999 drama documents the struggle of a group of idealists fighting for the rights of boat people and their mainland wives.
Simon Yam and Lam Suet star in Johnnie To’s missing gun thriller.
A tribute to the kung-fu classics of the ’60s and ’70s, 2010’s Gallants follows two martial artists patiently waiting for their master to wake up from the coma he’s been in for the last 30 years. Co-star Gordon Lam will be in attendance.
Fruit Chan’s 1997 story of tragic youth in its 2017 restoration which premiered at the Udine Far East Film Festival.
Director Alex Law paints an autobiographical tale of growing up in a working class family in late ’60s Hong Kong.
Three infamous criminals smuggle themselves into Hong Kong for the biggest heist ever in a crime thriller produced by Johnnie To and directed by three proteges from his Fresh Wave short film programme.
A grizzled cop chases a gold smuggling fisherman through storms literal and metaphorical in Jonathan Li’s feature debut. UK premiere – Co-star Gordon Lam will be in attendance.
Running at BFI Southbank through October and November, 
Starring Mizoguchi’s frequent leading lady Isuzu Yamada, Osaka Elegy centres on a switchboard operator who finds herself trapped in a ruinous relationship with her boss in an effort to save her father who has ruined himself through gambling debts. 
Women of the Night, completed in 1948, will screen along side Osaka Elegy (1936) and stars Kinuyo Tanaka in a tale of two sisters trying to survive in the ruined Osaka one of whom is a war widow and the other dangerously involved with a drugs smuggler. 35mm.
Kinuyo Tanaka also stars in Keisuke Kinoshita’s 1950 melodrama Wedding Ring. Starring opposite Toshiro Mifune, Tanaka plays a housewife who travels back and fore from the seaside, where her sickly husband convalesces, to Tokyo where she runs her family’s jewellery store. A chance encounter with a strapping doctor (Mifune) on a train has unforeseen consequences as the pair grow closer and the husband begins to realise that he cannot provide the happiness his wife is seeking. 35mm.
Clothes of Deception is directed by Kozaburo Yoshimura who was the subject (along with Kaneto Shindo) of the BFI’s previous 
Shiro Toyoda’s melodrama stars Hideko Takamine as a divorced woman who becomes the mistress of an elderly money lender to support her father but dares to dream of a happier future after falling for a young student. 35mm.
Tadashi Imai’s adaptation of a number of stories by 19th century writer Ichiyo Higuchi came top in Kinema Junpo’s best of list for 1953 and features three stories of women suffering at the hands of men. 35mm.
Kinuyo Tanaka, one of Japan’s great actresses, was not the nation’s first female director as she is sometimes described, but she was the first to have a career as a film director. The Eternal Breasts is Tanaka’s third directorial effort (following 
Hideko Takamine and Masayuki Mori play two former lovers cast adrift in the new post-war world world where their love is both impossible and impossible to escape. Naruse’s melancholy melodrama is the story of a woman who strives for self-determination while chasing a man who craves only respectability, as trapped and confused as her still divided nation. 35mm.
Masayuki Mori stars again in another romantic melodrama this time for Heinosuke Gosho (
Among the darkest of Ozu’s post-war movies, Tokyo Twilight is a less forgiving family drama in which Setsuko Hara plays the older of two sisters who has returned home from a failing marriage with her little girl in tow only to find out that her unmarried student younger sister is facing an unwanted pregnancy.
Soon after An Affair at Akitsu, also known as 
Recently restored, Noburu Nakamura’s The Shape of Night stars Miyuki Kuwano as a young woman forced into prostitution by a no good boyfriend. 35mm.
Cho Sun-ho’s time-loop drama A Day (하루, 
Jun-young, a successful surgeon but less than successful father, witnesses a car accident involving his daughter only to wake up as if it were just a dream. Realising that the events of his dream are proceeding as he saw them, Jun-young tries to save his daughter only to fail and have the exact same events repeat themselves over and over again until he meets another man in the same position who has been trying to save the life of the other victim. Together, the two men unite to save the lives of their loved ones and escape the nightmarish temporal loop in which they are both trapped.
Tag screens on 14th October at 12pm. Check out our review of the film 
Wales’ premier showcase for Japanese animation returns this September with some of the best in recent anime plus events and special guests. This year the festival runs for three bumper days at Chapter Arts Centre Cardiff (29th September – 1st October) before moving on to Aberystwyth Arts Centre for one day only, October 28th 2017.
Opening the festival will be the latest from Tatami Galaxy’s Masaaki Yuasa – The Night is Short, Walk on Girl in which a dark haired girl roams the dark city streets while her secret admirer waits patiently for an opportunity to reveal himself, little knowing that the dark haired girl feels exactly the same way…
Next up on Saturday 30th, Napping Princess sees the return of Ghost in the Shell SAC’s Kenji Kamiyama with a much more family friendly effort than might be expected. Regular teenage girl Kotone is sleeping her life away but her final summer vacation will provide unexpected adventures as she sets out to save the Tokyo Olympics from becoming an international disaster whilst solving the long buried mystery of her family origins. 
This one likely needs no introduction, but for the uninitiated Makoto Shinkai’s latest effort, Your Name, is a body swapping tale of star crossed lovers which has a much happier conclusion than Shinkai’s generally melancholy fare. 
The third in a series of three feature animations inspired by the works of late science fiction author Project Itoh (the other two being 
Produced by Osamu Tezuka, Eiichi Yamamoto’s Belladonna of Sadness has been little seen since its 1973 release but a recent 4K restoration is helping to change that for the better so this psychedelic exploration of sex, witchcraft, and folklore can finally be properly appreciated. 
Sunday’s first offering is a heartrending story of friendship and redemption between a girl with hearing problems and the boy who mercilessly bullied her in childhood only to get a taste of his own medicine and intensely regret it. Read our review of A Silent Voice 
Production I.G. is one of the most well regarded animation studios currently in operation this and series of four shorts by different directors demonstrates its strengths and versatility.
Masaaki Yuasa’s 2004 debut, Mind Game, will also be screened as the closing movie in Cardiff on 1st October. Adapted from a manga by Robin Nishi, the anime follows an aspiring mangaka, also named Nishi, who runs into his teenage crush only to find out she is about to marry someone else, gets mixed up with yakuza, goes all the way to heaven and back, and then gets trapped inside a whale where he meets God…
Following a second screening of Napping Princess at 11am, the festival continues at Aberystwyth Arts Centre with a screening of the Sword Art Online movie, Ordinal Scale, which follows Kirito and co. into the latest game using the brand new Augma system.
The 
Chinese independent cinema has been in the ascendent recently, becoming a regular presence at high profile festivals. This year’s selection of films from the mainland includes two very different animated features alongside comedy, action and arthouse.
Japanese entries are dominated by animation but there’s also space for Takashi Miike’s manga adaptation Blade of the Immortal which headlines the Thrill section, as well as Naoko Ogigami’s latest Close-Knit, and the recent 4K restoration of 60s avant-garde masterpiece Funeral Parade of Roses.
Everything you’d expect from Korea from anarchic documentary to violent procedural and the annual return of Hong Sang-soo.
Thailand’s two entries feature youth looking forward and age looking back.
Following their 
First up, A Tale of Samurai Cooking: A True Love Story proves that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach (rather than through his chest with a sword). Headstrong Haru (Aya Ueto) gets “sent back” from her first marriage and then receives an interesting proposal from the Emperor’s own samurai cooks thanks to her awesome skills in the kitchen. Her husband to be, Yasunobu (Kengo Kora), is very unhappy about this seeing as he still wants to be a “real” samurai and is nursing a broken heart. 
Based on the writings of the real Jun Nishimura, Shuichi Okita’s The Chef of South Polar follows a put upon chef as he’s forced to leave his family and become the sole cook for seven research scientists marooned at the South Pole for a whole year. Despite the hazardous conditions Nishimura keeps churning out beautifully presented dishes while the guys all go slowly mad together. 
Naomi Kawase’s An (Sweet Bean) is a less comedic tale of inter-generational friendship, social injustice and continuing stigma towards those suffering illness, and a celebration of tradition passed from one era to the next. Masatoshi Nagase plays a struggling doriaki chef who gets a few tips from a strange old lady (Kirin Kiki). He originally turns her down for a job at his stand because of her age and gnarled hands, but tasting her bean paste, there is no way he can refuse.
And finally the greatest food movie of them all – Juzo Itami’s Tampopo! This iconic comedy follows the titular widow as she tries to make a success of her ramen stand with the help of lonely truck drivers Goro and Gun. While Tampopo is busy with her noodles, Itami ventures off on a cultural odyssey to explore the various ways food is used and misused in Japanese society. 
Windows on Worlds 