37 Seconds (HIKARI, Japan/USA 2019) An astonishing directorial debut from Osaka-born filmmaker HIKARI, this moving coming-of-age drama is about Yuma (Kayama Mei), a skilled manga artist with cerebral palsy who desires …
Asian films that first premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival each February tend not to travel to Toronto in September. The reasons vary, but it’s often down to matters …
Asian films at the 44th Toronto International Film Festival (5-15 September 2019) are holding steady at less than twenty titles. Although the figure reveals a chronic flatlining of the festival’s …
Chikaura Kei’s confident debut feature is the story of a Chinese economic migrant whose shaky existence begins to unravel after a string of deceits and crimes he has committed to …
Full spoilers ahead. If there was any doubt about what kind of genre Murakami Haruki’s 1983 short story Barn Burning is, writer-director Lee Chang-Dong has called it by adapting the …
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 …