The Berlin International Film Festival returns with the 68th edition from 15 – 25th February. Long a champion of East Asian cinema, this year’s program arrives with a series of highly anticipated features including the latest from Isao Yukisada, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, and Hong Sang-soo.
Japan
- Amiko – 16 year old Amiko has left Nagano behind to look for the boyfriend who skipped out on her to go to Tokyo with another girl.
- Blue Wind Blows – A small boy on Sado chases ghosts with the help of a bookish friend.
- Minatomachi – Kazuhiro Soda’s latest documentary focusses on a declining fishing village.
- Our House – Two women inhabit the same space in Yui Kiyohara’s eerie drama.
- Ramen Teh – A Japanese ramen chef travels to Singapore after the death of his father to find out more about his Singaporean mother who died when he was only 10.
- River’s Edge – A young man bullied because of his sexuality finds a dead body and investigates with the help of his best friend and confidant in the latest from Isao Yukisada.
- Yocho (Foreboding) – Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s companion piece to Before We Vanish, Yocho is the story of an alien doctor and his Earthling wife.
- Tokyo Boshoku (Tokyo Twilight) – In this restored classic from Yasujiro Ozu, a young woman copes with an unwanted pregnancy with the help of her sister who has returned home in flight from an alcoholic husband.
- Yama – Attack to Attack – Intended as a document of the workers’ struggle, this 1985 documentary eventually cost both of its directors their lives at the hands of the yakuza whose corruption they hoped to expose.
Tribute to Keiko Sato
“Pink film” – independently made softcore erotica, is generally thought of as being a very male affair but one of its driving forces, Keiko Sato, was actually a woman and the festival will pay tribute to her with three films from her surprisingly diverse career as a producer.
- Abnormal Family – Masayuki Suo’s only pink film takes the form of an Ozu pastiche centring on one very unusual family.
- Gushing Prayer – Masao Adachi takes the pink film in a political direction through the story of a young woman on the quest to beat sex.
- Inflatable Sex Doll of the Wastelands – From the screenwriter of Branded to Kill, Inflatable Sex Doll of the Wastelands follows a hitman on a surreal and noirish journey.
Korea
- Inkan, gongkan, sikan grigo inkan (Human, Space, Time, and Human) – A senator and his son, a newly wed couple, a mysterious old man, a group of sex workers, and a violent gang all set off on a warship in Kim Ki-duk’s latest.
- Grass – Kim Min-hee sits in a coffee shop and observes the world around her in another whimsical drama from Hong Sang-soo.
- Last Child – After their son dies saving another child, the bereaved parents eventually bond with the boy he was trying to save though all is not as it seems.
- Old Love – A woman returns to Korea from Canada and re-encounters an old flame.
China
- Monster Hunt 2 – A sequel to the Chinese megahit set in a fictional past in which humans and monsters co-exist.
- An Elephant Sitting Still – The first and only feature film from the late Hu Bo, An Elephant Standing Still is a story of stagnation and the dream of escape.
- Rou qing shi (Girls Always Happy) – A mother and daughter lead frustratingly interdependent lives in Yang Mingming’s drama.
- Wang Zha de yuxue (Wangrak’s Rain Boots) – little Wangdrak just wants a pair of boots!
Taiwan
- 14 Apples – Midi Z’s documentary follows a businessman on a 14 day sojourn as a monk.
- Xiao Mei – A ordinary shop girl disappears leaving only confusion and mystery behind her.
Thailand
- Die Tomorrow – Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit follows a collection of people through their last day.
Philippines
- Ang Panahon ng Halimaw (Season of the Devil) – A Philippine rock opera from Lav Diaz set in the Martial Law era.
- Manila Scream Expanded – three shorts from underground filmmaker Roxlee.
Indonesia
- Sekala Niskala (The Seen and Unseen) – The second film from Kamila Andini, The Seen and Unseen follows one half of a pair of twins as she deals with the deteriorating health of her brother…
The Berlin International Film Festival takes place from February 15 – 25 at venues across the city. Ticket sales begin 12th February via the official website and you can keep up with all the latest details via the festival’s Facebook Page, Twitter account, YouTube and Instagram Channels.
The 
Manga and anime phenomenon Attack on Titan has been taking the world by storm over the last couple of years, even packing in a pair of disappointing 
Takahide Hori’s beautifully designed stop-motion animation follows the adventures of a robot “God” as he (?) descends the various levels of underground existence looking for a cure for humanity’s ongoing decline… 
Recently restored by the Taiwan Film Institute, King Hu’s Legend of the Mountain follows a Sung Dynasty scholar tasked with translating a set of Buddhist scriptures which are said to have power over the spirits of the dead. To do so he travels to an isolated monastery in the mountains where he is assailed by the forces of evil who want to steal the scriptures for themselves…
Note: Glasgow Film Festival appears to be screening the film under a literal translation, according to the film’s UK distributor 
A feisty widow takes to the road in search of vengeance after her ranch is raided and she is attacked by bandits in this festival favourite Eastern western from Indonesia.
The debut feature from SFX makeup artist Soichi Umezawa, B-movie horror Vampire Clay takes place in an isolated art school in which the students start going mysteriously missing…could cursed clay really be to blame?
The 
Yo Oizumi stars as a high school teacher investigating the disappearance of a friend in another darkly comic, twist filled farce from Kenji Uchida (
Kazuya Shiraishi (
When a schoolgirl falls off a roof foul play is suspected. Who better to investigate than her fellow members of the literature club at an elite academy catering to the daughters of the rich and famous?
A young reporter (Satoshi Tsumabuki) investigates the brutal murder of a model family whilst trying to support his younger sister (Hikari Mitsushima) who is currently in prison for child neglect while his nephew remains in critical condition in hospital. Interviewing friends and acquaintances of the deceased, disturbing truths emerge concerning the systemic evils of social inequality. 
Based on a best selling romantic novel which captured the hearts of readers across Japan, Initiation Love sets out to expose the dark and disturbing underbelly of real life romance by completely reversing everything you’ve just seen in a gigantic twist five minutes before the film ends…
A young woman goes missing and unwittingly becomes the face of a social movement in Daigo Matsui’s anarchic examination of a misogynistic society.
A brother and sister are orphaned after a natural disaster and taken in by relatives but struggle to come to terms with the aftermath of such great loss.
Miwa Nishikawa adapts her own novel in which a self-centred novelist is forced to face his own delusions when his wife is killed in a freak bus accident. 
When the statute of limitations passes on a series of unsolved murders, a mysterious man (Tatsuya Fujiwara) suddenly comes forward and confesses while the detective (Hideaki Ito) who is still haunted by his inability to catch the killer has his doubts in Yu Irie’s adaptation of Jung Byoung-Gil’s Korean crime thriller Confession of Murder.
Toma Ikuta stars as maverick cop Reiji in Takashi Miike’s madcap manga adaptation. Reiji has been kicked off the force for trying to arrest a councillor who was molesting a teenage girl but gets secretly rehired to go undercover in Japan’s best known yakuza conglomerate.
Yoshihiro Nakamura (
Yuzo Kawashima would have turned 100 in 2018. A comic tale of life on the Osakan margins, Room For Let is a perfect example of the director’s well known talent for satire and stars popular comedian Frankie Sakai as an eccentric writer/translator-cum-konnyaku-maker whose life is turned upside down when a pretty young potter moves into the building.
Embittered 55 year old OL Setsuko gets a new lease on life when introduced to an unusual English conversation teacher, John, who gives her a blonde wig and rechristens her Lucy. “Lucy” falls head over heels for the American stranger and decides to follow him all the way to the states… 
A remake of Korean hit 
A small boy recruits the mysterious samurai “No Name” as a bodyguard after his dog is injured in an ambush in the landmark animation from 2007.
A no good lowlife makes his way by stealing from elderly women but experiences a change of heart when he’s taken in by a kindly old lady deep in the mountains.
Poland’s 
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.
Shining a light on a new, under appreciated film culture, Five Flavours presents a series of new films from Bhutan.
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.
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…
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.
Following a long series of teaser screenings which culminated with Cannes hit 
The 
Closing the festival will be the second film from Kim Dae-hwan who picked up the best new director award at Locarno for this awkward tale of familial disconnection. 
The special focus for this year’s festival is Korean Noir and Korean cinema has certainly had a long and proud history of gritty, existential crime thrillers. Running right through from the ’60s to recent Cannes hit The Merciless, the Korean Noir strand aims to illuminate the dark side of society through its compromised heroes and conflicted villains.
The best in recent cinema across the previous year ranging from period drama to financial thriller, gangland action, social drama, and horror.
Programmed by Tony Rayns, this year’s indie strand has a special focus on documentary filmmaker Jung Yoon-suk who will be attending the festival in person to present his films.
Focussing on female viewpoints this year’s Women’s Voices strand includes one narrative feature and four short films.
Three films from legendary director Bae Chang-ho each starring Ahn Sung-ki.
Workers’ rights and examinations of the Yongsan tragedy in which five civilians and one police officer lost their lives during a protest against redevelopment dominate the feature documentary strand.
Two charming yet very different animated adventures aimed at a younger/family audience.
A selection of shorts from the 
Windows on Worlds 