Ash is Purest White (Jia Zhangke, China/France 2018) Since his mid-career lane switch in 2013, Jia Zhangke has ditched the sluggish arthouse gloom that made him a brand in favour of …
Graves Without a Name (Panh Rithy, Cambodia/France 2018) Panh Rithy’s latest documentary in his stable of Cambodia-centric films ranks as one of his saddest titles within his lifetime’s duty to document …
When a British newspaper interviewing Kore-eda Hirokazu in 2015 asked how he felt about his signature family dramas often being compared to those of the late Ozu Yasujiro, the respected …
Running 6-16 September 2018, the Toronto International Film Festival’s 43rd edition offers a stunningly diminished number of Asian feature films—the fewest in at least the last several years. Although market vagaries …
Film festivals like Toronto are sometimes like revolving doors. Each year their whirlwind oscillations allow just the big films with coin and clout to pass through, attracting instant publicity, esteem …
Hirayanagi Atsuko’s refreshing debut feature Oh Lucy! is one whimsical cocktail, mixing one part urban alienation, one part domestic drama, two parts road movie, and topped with splashes of comic …
Styled as a comic domestic drama but hiding sweeping undercurrents, Mina Shum’s crowd-pleasing fourth feature portrays a Vancouver family whose lives are jolted by a convergence of difficult revelations and …
The laughter dropped often from the packed press and industry screening on opening night, but as the film wore on it was hard to shake off the feeling that their …
Toronto’s largest film festival is shrinking with age. Earlier this year it had announced plans to reduce its overall program by a fifth by axing some sections and venues. The …
Kore-eda Hirokazu occupies an esteemed perch in contemporary Japanese cinema. Over the past two decades his films have been well-received both in his native Japan and around the world for …