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"Harmony is a precious thing..." Janus Films has debuted a new 4K restoration trailer for the re-release of the masterpiece Yi Yi, the final film from Taiwanese maestro Edward Yang. This originally premiered in the year 2000 at the Cannes Film Festival, and has grown with time to now be considered one of the greatest films ever made (I completely agree!). It really is an astonishing, towering, extraordinary work of cinematic art – I adore it, too. Yi Yi, titled in full Yi Yi: A One and a Two..., is a portrait of a middle-class family in Taipei, Taiwan in the late 90s. A man in his 40s, his teenage daughter and his eight-year-old son experience life,...

The filmography of Edward Yang can be crudely divided into two main themes: the manner in which people in close physical proximity remain emotionally detached from one another, and the corrosive social impact of unchecked capitalism. Arguably, the two films which best balance these themes are 1994’s A Confucian Confusion and 1996’s Mahjong. Bitterly, sardonically cynical in tone about the impact of class aspirationalism on Taiwanese life, the films nonetheless strive to zero in on the humanity that its characters repress.

A Confucian Confusion expands on an approach that Yang took in his prior features: that of an anti-network narrative that hinges not on the coincidental intersections and near-misses of ostensibly unrelated characters,...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

This week’s edition of NYC Weekend Watch is sponsored by The Balconettes, opening today at New York’s IFC Center, as well as the Nuart in LA and TIFF Lightbox in Toronto.

Film at Lincoln Center

Double-feature pairings of M. Night Shyamalan films and personally curated complements begin; Shinji Sōmai’s The Friends starts playing in a new restoration (watch our trailer debut)

IFC Center

Films by John Woo and Ching Siu-tung screen in Hong Kong Cinema Classics; The Lovers on the Bridge and Diva play in new restorations while In the Mood for Love and In the Mood for Love...

Note: This feature was originally published in 2023 as part of Film at Lincoln Center’s Edward Yang retrospective. A Confucian Confusion and Mahjong are now available on The Criterion Collection.

What splits the fine line between desire and expectations? Is it a thing you can see? Is it a thing you can film?

Film at Lincoln Center’s new retrospective supposes that if any of those questions have answers, they might reside in the cinema of Edward Yang. Moving from “A Rational Mind”––the title of their 2011 retrospective of Yang’s work––to “Desire/Expectations” reframes those questions to be more diffuse, less singular. A rational mind could answer in...

No matter that a child born the day after Edward Yang’s death will start college this month; the Taiwanese filmmaker’s stature has grown so much in the last 18 years that a Criterion release or restoration debut offers more excitement than almost any new cinema. This is, I think, the natural reward for work that grows with you and yields fresh wisdom each time through, making the 4K restoration of his final film Yi Yi––a movie that began this cinematic century and has rarely been matched 25 years on––an event. Following a debut at this year’s Cannes, it’ll begin (courtesy of Janus Films) a national roll-out...

30 years after its original release, “A Confucian Confusion” returns to theaters with a sharp 4K digital restoration – a great opportunity to (re)acquaint oneself with the work of Edward Yang, one of Taiwan’s most talented filmmakers. His films provide a biting commentary on Taiwanese society during the transformative decades of the 1980s and 1990s.

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Tracking the many characters and storylines in “A Confucian Confusion” can be a challenge, however. The film follows a group of young professionals navigating their professional and romantic entanglements in 1994 Taipei. At the center is Molly, engaged to Akeem (Bosen Wang), the son of a wealthy and influential family. Bored by the prospect of becoming a housewife, Molly runs a communications and entertainment agency – a gift from Akeem, intended to keep her occupied. Their relationship is transactional at its core, more a strategic alliance between families than a romantic partnership.

Anthology films are a privileged lens into the power of variation and interconnection in art. “In Our Time”, in that sense, may be one of its most famous exponents. At face value, it is four short films made by four at-the-time novice filmmakers, all describing, as the title says, the shared culture and unique situations that shaped their generation. At its heart, though, it is a series of vignettes about a very particular time, place, and context, as much as it is a series of intimately shared experiences made by its post-globalized youth.

Most famously, it is the picture that allegedly began the Taiwanese New Wave, perhaps the most important film movement in recent Asian history. Introducing some of the most radical voices on the medium even to date, they sought to sharply cut through the country’s preconceptions, dive into its muddled history, and point to its social shortcomings.

Luck is a peculiar concept. Winning the lottery is lucky, but so too is it the traditional thing to say when the bus that could have killed you merely breaks every bone in your body. Lloyd Lee Choi’s compassionate, absorbing, sometimes agonizing “Lucky Lu” deals exclusively in the latter type — the tough luck of the narrow escape and the near miss, which doesn’t manifest in sudden windfalls but in the paltry miracle of bad circumstances not being so much worse. Whatever lucky star Choi’s characters must thank, it’s a dim one, usually obscured by clouds and skyscrapers.

Not that there’s much time for anyone here to look up; far down below the skyline, on the streets of New York City, Chinese immigrant Lu (Chang Chen) works tirelessly as a delivery bike rider. After five years of separation from his family back home, he has scraped...

If Criterion’s influence from the last 15-or-so years must distilled to one figure, a good candidate might be Edward Yang. The near-instant canonization of Yi Yi, A Brighter Summer Day, and Taipei Story––not quite tailor-made for constant sell-out screenings or big streaming numbers, and yet––sets a nice precedent for their two-film package comprising A Confucian Confusion and Mahjong, both of which make North American home-video debuts in August. While missing a touch of prestige for being Blu-only, this should be exceeded by very few things Criterion releases for the remainder of 2025.

Three films have 4K releases this August: Kon Ichikawa’s Fires on the Plain and The Burmese Harp are appreciable upgrades, while Vittorio De Sica’s Shoeshine (a better film than Bicycle Thieves? why not) enters Criterion’s slate in decked-out form. Meanwhile, Youssef Chahine’s Cairo Station, Alice Wu’s Saving Face, and recent Janus restoration Compensation arrive on Blu-ray.

In the shadows of Tokyo’s relentless redevelopment, rising filmmaker Yuiga Danzuka found both the canvas and the subject for his Cannes Directors’ Fortnight selection “Brand New Landscape.” The debut feature transforms the Japanese capital’s architectural flux into a metaphor for a family navigating grief and disconnection. The film is subsequently playing at the Shanghai International Film Festival.

“As someone born and raised in Tokyo, I’ve long felt a complex, hard-to-articulate emotion toward the city’s rapid transformation,” Danzuka says. “When my cultural discomfort with urban life overlapped with deeply personal feelings about my own family, I instinctively felt that this was a story that needed to be made into a film.”

The film follows two siblings grappling with their mother’s absence and the return of their estranged father, a renowned architect, against the backdrop of Tokyo’s ever-changing skyline.

Danzuka, who studied under filmmaker Kunitoshi Manda...

Exclusive: Call My Agent! star Camille Cottin has reunited with Nathan Ambrosioni for his third film Out of Love about a woman whose sister disappears leaving behind her two young children.

It marks the actress’s second collaboration with the 25-year-old, self-taught director after starring in his second 2022 feature Toni about a single mother of five, contemplating a new life as her children leave home,

“He is writing, directing and editing everything himself. It’s all in his head. He’s really obsessed with cinema and has so many references and directors that he loves… which really enriches what he does,” says Cottin of Ambrosioni, who has cited influences such as Hirokazu Kore-Eda and Edward Yang in past interviews.

Out of Love also tackles themes of motherhood but in a more somber fashion.

Cottin plays a successful, self-contained career woman with no desire to have children, who suddenly finds her...

Unfolding like 100 years of home video footage that were shot by the family ghosts, Mascha Schilinski’s rich and mesmeric “Sound of Falling” glimpses four generation of young women as they live, die, and suffuse their memories into the walls of a rural farmhouse in the north German region of Altmark.

In the 1940s, after some of the local boys are maimed by their parents in order to avoid fighting Hitler’s war, teenage Erika (Lea Drinda) hobbles through the halls with one of her tied legs up in string, eager to know what losing a limb might feel like. Unbeknownst to her, cherubic little Alma (Hanna Heckt) expressed a similar curiosity some 30 years earlier when she played dead on the parlor room couch, posing in the same position that her late grandmother’s corpse had been placed for a post-mortem daugerreotype.

And yet, coming of age in the German Democratic Republic of the 1980s,...

Cambodian-made productions rarely see the light of day on the North American film festival circuit, but Chheangkea‘s “Grandma Nai Who Played Favorites” is a stand-out. The film first began to claim recognition before its debut, winning the Frameline San Francisco International LGBTQ Film Festival Completion Fund. After winning the Short Film Jury Award for International Fiction at Sundance, two more award nominations at San Francisco International Film Festival and Asian Pop-up Cinema, and now an upcoming screening at CAAMFest, Chheangkea’s short is gradually making the rounds in the most major queer and Asian film festivals in the United States today.

Over the span of 20 minutes, we see through the eyes of the dead. The film opens with an extended family visiting the grave of Grandma Nai (Saroeun Nay) on their annual tomb sweeping day. As her descendants swap gossip and share food, Grandma Nai silently watches over one...

With the Cannes Film Festival just around the corner, the festival has now unveiled its Classics lineup, featuring new restorations, films about filmmaking, and much more. Highlights include Stéphane Ghez’s David Lynch, une énigme à Hollywood (Welcome to Lynchland), a new documentary about the late director, Quentin Tarantino in-person to present two features by George Sherman, plus films by Edward Yang, John Woo, Stanley Kubrick, Charlie Chaplin, Mikio Naruse, Marcel Pagnol, and more.

Check out the lineup below and learn more here.

The Gold Rush: 100th Year Anniversary!

After La Maman et la putain, L’Amour fou and Napoléon par Abel Gance, the Festival de Cannes will premiere as a worldwide pre-opening film on Tuesday, May 13, 2025, at 3Pm in Debussy Theater, Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush.

The Gold Rush by Charlie Chaplin

(La Ruée vers l’or)

A presentation by Roy Export Sas with the support of mk2.

Quentin Tarantino will be the guest of honour at Cannes Classics, the repertory cinema strand of Cannes Film Festival’s Official Selection.

Tarantino will present two western films by George Sherman – 1949’s Red Canyon, and 1950’s Comanche Territory – and will take part in a discussion with critic and filmmaker Elvis Mitchell.

Scroll down for the full selection of Cannes Classics titles

The Classics lineup includes the Cannes pre-opening film, a 4K restoration of Charlie Chaplin’s 1925 The Gold Rush, restored by the L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory at the Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna. Mk2 Films is arranging a worldwide re-release of the...

This year’s Cannes Classics section will open with an expansive program that draws from over a century of global cinema. The 2025 edition brings together restored films, retrospectives, and intimate new documentaries while spotlighting influential directors across time, including Quentin Tarantino, David Lynch, and Edward Yang.

Quentin Tarantino returns to the Croisette as guest of honor, with a personal tribute to late American director George Sherman. Known for his extensive catalog of low-budget westerns, Sherman made his mark at Universal Pictures in the 1940s and 1950s, where he directed dozens of action-driven titles across a range of genres. Two of his most prominent westerns, Red Canyon (1949) and Comanche Territory (1950), will screen in Tarantino’s honor. The filmmaker, whose relationship with Cannes spans decades, will discuss Sherman’s legacy in a live conversation with film critic and documentarian Elvis Mitchell.

Tarantino’s presence signals a continuing engagement with the history of...

Quentin Tarantino will be guest of honor of Cannes Classics this year with a special tribute devoted to late low-budget westerns director George Sherman.

The Cannes regular, who won the Palme d’Or winner for Pulp Fiction and President of the Jury in 2004, will share his passion for Sherman’s work with screenings of two of his westerns made for Universal Pictures – Red Canyon and Comanche Territory – in one of his most creative periods.

Tarantino will participate in a conversation about Sherman moderated by critic and documentary filmmaker Elvis Mitchell.

Other highlights of the program devoted to classic cinema include a pre-opening screening of Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush, to mark the centenary of its making, as well as a 25th anniversary screening of Amores perros by Alejandro G. Iñárritu, in the presence of director, and the 50th anniversary screening of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

Shia Labeouf...

The restoration of ‘My Favourite Season’, a film released in 1985 and then largely forgotten or not even exhibited to audiences outside of Taiwan, gives Chen Ku-ho‘s work another chance to shine. The film offers a rather unusual take on the romantic comedy, by turning the generic structure on its head.

The two protagonists form a marriage of convenience, as the female lead, Liou Hsiang-mei (Sylvia Chang) becomes pregnant at the beginning of the story, and decides to find a husband so that the child could have a surname. The male character, Bi Bao-liang (Jonathan Chung-Shan) is initially reluctant to the idea: “I can’t date women younger than thirty”, he explains mysteriously. After a while, he warms to the idea and the two put pen to paper and sign a contract to become husband and wife for a year. Improbable as it sounds, the film’s exaggerated premise allows...

Talking about the Taiwan New Cinema movement, film historians and cinephiles often discuss the works of Edward Yang, Hou Hsiao-hsien, and Tsai Ming-liang due to their Western acclaim. Though these filmmakers produce great cinema, their acclaim often overshadows other important works of the movement. The 1983 film ‘Out of the Blue‘ belongs to this overlooked category.

Autumn Tempest is screening at BFI for Myriad Voices: Reframing Taiwan New Cinema

Directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien’s cinematographer Chen Kun-hou and written by Hou himself alongside Chu T’ien-wen—who later became his regular co-writer and based on the novel by Chu’s sister—’Out of the Blue’ offers a slow yet profound rendering of life in 1980s Taiwan.

The film tells the story of Ho Jie-lung, a young man in his late teens who falls in love with Tang Mi, a girl of the same age. Both characters come from different backgrounds.

Queer East Festival is back from 23 April to 18 May 2025 for a four-week-long festival of cinema and performing arts across London, showcasing over 100 titles, including features, shorts, documentaries and moving image work that explores the ever-evolving queer landscape across East and Southeast Asia.

The richness of Asian and queer communities forms a vital part of the UK’s identity and over the past six years Queer East has forged a space for bold, alternative and multifaceted expressions of artistic queerness.

Activism, community and the collective memory of queer history take centre stage in this year’s programme: from an avant-garde cult classic shot in Shinjuku in the 1960s, to a verbatim theatre play about queer elders in Singapore; from a heartfelt documentary on lesbian advocacy, to an intimate dance piece about queer belonging, the festival continues its commitment to screening a vital and diverse programme that will get audiences talking.

Opening...

Isabel Sandoval, the Hollywood-based Filipino filmmaker behind the critically acclaimed “Lingua Franca,” is putting the finishing touches on her latest feature “Moonglow,” a romantic noir set against the backdrop of Marcos-era Philippines in 1979.

The film is selected for the Hong Kong — Asia Film Financing Forum (Haf), the project market that operates concurrently with Hong Kong FilMart.

The Filipino-language thriller follows Dahlia, a disillusioned police aide who steals money from the safe of her corrupt police chief boss, distributing it to slum dwellers whose homes were destroyed. Unaware of her actions, the police chief assigns Dahlia to investigate the theft alongside his nephew Charlie — who happens to be Dahlia’s former lover.

“I’ve always been enamored with the methodical, slow-burn thrillers of Jean-Pierre Melville,” Sandoval told Variety. “The idea of marrying those sensibilities with the lyrical camerawork and romanticism of Max Ophüls is how the film started.”

With a budget of $1.08 million,...

‘We worked together on the project and what mattered most wasn’t whether we made something successful. It was the team spirit and the strength we put together then. Something we don’t see today.’

– Sylvia Chang

Myriad Voices: Reframing Taiwan New Cinema is a season curated by Hyun Jin Cho and presented in partnership with Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute and Ministry of Culture, Taiwan. Taiwan New Cinema was grounded in a collective spirit of creativity, playfulness, and humility. Yet, while auteurs like Edward Yang and Hou Hsiao-Hsien are internationally recognised, many pivotal figures remain lesser known.

Taipei Story

This innovative season hopes to paint a fuller picture of this vibrant movement and shift the spotlight towards lesser known but vital contributors, whose work helped shape this new cinematic expression, with around half of the features never having screened in UK cinemas before. Several films, such as My Favorite...

Like a vast 19th-century landscape painting of farmers toiling under the sun, with hundreds of details evoking a world of strife, sorrow and occasional jubilation, director Huo Meng’s Living the Land (Sheng Xi Zhi Di) immerses the viewer in a remote Chinese agricultural community with all the precision and beauty of an accomplished artist.

Skillfully woven and shot over several seasons, this sweeping family chronicle is set in 1991, a time when major reforms were transforming China from a nation of rural laborers into the industrial powerhouse it still is today. Caught amid the changing tides is a young boy named Xu Chuang (Wang Shang), who’s been sent to live with relatives in the countryside while his parents make ends meet elsewhere. He becomes our entry point to a place where centuries of tradition are being slowly overhauled by the modern age, forcing people to adapt as they try...

Following The Film Stage’s collective top 50 films of 2024, as part of our year-end coverage, our contributors are sharing their personal top 10 lists.

2024 saw the flicker of a major flame in the strands of cinema that have my heart the most.

It was a year where sex, romance, and representation were back on the menu in exciting new configurations, mirrored behind the camera and in front of the screen. Films that made us feel, self-reflect, introspect, change our minds, and realize. In a sociopolitical climate increasingly intent on sidelining and disavowing empathy at every turn, it’s comforting to know that we are not immune to movies.

Favorite Big Screen Rediscoveries: Zerophilia, Moving, Bumpkin Soup, Manji, Their Last Love Affair

Honorable Mentions: Caught by the Tides, Summer Solstice, Gift, Ghost Cat Anzu, You Burn Me

10. Happyend (Neo Sora)

In 2024, Japanese cinema began to travel and shift in new ways. The...

Some years ago, I asked my friend Victor Fan to suggest a book that could work as an introduction to the cinema of China, Hong Kong and Taiwan at the same time, and his rather quick answer was “Chinese National Cinema” by Yingjin Zhang. A few years after that, now that I have finished the book, I have to extend a big thank you to him, because this book not only fulfilled my request, but is actually one of the best publications about the history of cinema I have ever read. Let us take things from the beginning though.

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In a prologue that is somewhat intricate, but definitely less complicated than usual in academic books, Yingjin Zhang on the issue of defining Chinese National Cinema under the complicated historical background of what the book calls the Three Chinas: China, Taiwan, Hong Kong.

By Goh Ming Siu

Fade up on a mountain of rocks in a quarry — raw material for construction, for literal nation-building, yet mining also destabilizes the land. The shot tracks along, as we hear a distant rumble – is it a storm on the horizon, far-off construction, or something more ominous? The camera comes to rest on an empty frame. The protagonist, Lim Cheng Soon (Peter Yu) and his brother Cheng Boon (Johnson Choo) rise from below, where they’ve been digging for rocks, up into frame.

An opening that encapsulates a film where everything important is operating under the surface, a film that needs one to excavate it for a meaningful experience. Hemingway-esque in its sparseness but also in its hidden richness and depth, much like the films of Edward Yang. We think we know what’s going to happen, because we’re familiar with the tropes. Yet at every turn,...

Celebrated Taiwanese director Edward Yang‘s penultimate feature is a deceptively simple and straightforward affair. “Mahjong” poses as an over-the-top, soap opera-esque tale full of petty criminals, blackmail, sentimental manipulation and unrequited love. But it also offers a bittersweet chronicle of life, love, greed and economic opportunism in the booming, bustling Taipei of the late 1990s.

Mahjong is screening at San Diego Asian Film Festival

The film follows a group of rowdy young men who share the same apartment while ripping off other people for a living – and almost, it seems, for a hobby. Their leader is Red Fish (Tsung Sheng Tang), an enterprising young hustler who sees the world as one huge scamming opportunity with only the capitalist sky for a limit. His father is a fugitive businessman and con man who has made a fortune out of Taiwan’s roaring economy, and Red Fish has assimilated to his...

Indian filmmaker Payal Kapadia, who was awarded the Grand Prix at this year’s Cannes film festival for her debut narrative feature All We Imagine As Light, talked about the challenges facing indie filmmakers in India during a conversation with Japanese auteur Hirokazu Kore-eda at Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF).

She also touched on how she felt about the fact that All We Imagine As Light was not selected by India’s Oscars committee as its submission for the Best International feature category, but was gracious about the snub.

Kore-eda was on the Cannes competition jury that awarded Kapadia’s film, and said he was impressed by her work, but due to the restraints of jury duty, had not been able to talk to her and find out more about her career. The Japanese director is a Cannes regular, winning the Palme d’Or for Shoplifters in 2018, while Yuji Sakamoto...

Though the Criterion Collection may be taking their beloved closet on the road to celebrate their 40th anniversary, only the lucky few have been able to step foot in the actual hallowed space. Now, renaissance man Bill Hader can say he’s done so twice. The actor, writer, and director behind the hit HBO series “Barry” first entered the Criterion Closet in 2011. Dressed for the occasion with an orange shirt sporting the Kaibyō from the poster for the 1977 Japanese horror film “House,” Hader drew selections such as Federico Fellini’s “Amarcord” and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s grotesque “Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom,” which he referred to at the time as “a great date movie.”

Referencing this pick in his latest video, Hader displayed “Salò” once again and said, “It is not a good date movie. Just want to clear that up.”

After making a few jokes at the expense...

After becoming the first Singaporean filmmaker to win Locarno’s Golden Leopard for A Land Imagined, Yeo Siew Hua will break new ground again with mystery thriller Stranger Eyes, which is the first Singapore film to premiere in-competition at the Venice Film Festival.

The Singapore-Taiwan-France-u.S. co-production stars a Taiwanese ensemble cast featuring legendary actor-director Lee Kang-Sheng, Wu Chien-Ho, Annica Panna and Vera Chen. Malaysian actor Pete Teo and Singaporean actress Xenia Tan also appear in the film.

Yeo conceived the Stranger Eyes project more than 10 years ago but he and Akanga Film Asia’s veteran producer Fran Borgia hit several “dead ends” with funding.

“We decided that we were going to try something else and pitch different projects, so that’s how A Land Imagined came about,” Yeo told Deadline.

A Land Imagined, Yeo’s second feature, also went on to clinch Best Original Screenplay and Best Original Film...

Asian-produced teen and coming-of-age films will be the focus of a special section at this year’s Busan International Film Festival which is heading for its 29 edition in October.

With 10 titles, the section comprises a mix of notable recent productions, such as Malaysian body horror and self-discovery title “Tiger Stripes,” and a pair of world premieres.

In addition to “Tiger Stripes,” which won the Grand Prix Prize in Critics Week at Cannes in 2023, was selected as Malaysia’s Oscar contender only to be cut by local censors, the selection includes: “City of Wind,” winner of the Orizzonti Award for best actor at Venice last year; Okuyama Hiroshi’s “My Sunshine,” from this year’s Cannes Un Certain Regard section; Sora Neo’s “Happyend,” which will play at Venice next month’; Shuchi Talati’s “Girls Will Be Girls,” winner of the audience awards at Sundance in January; and “Fishbone,” which won...

Distribution veteran Wendy Lidell will depart Kino Lorber as SVP of theatrical acquisitions and distribution at the end of June after eight years to pursue a new, undisclosed, chapter.

Kino Lorber chairman and CEO Richard Lorber made the announcement on Friday and hailed Lidell as “the rarest amalgam of smart cinephile and canny business executive”.

Kino Lorber chief revenue officer Lisa Schwartz will oversee theatrical distribution and acquisitions in the interim and continue to report to Klmg president Ed Carroll.

Lidell joined the company in 2016. During her tenure she shepherded three documentaries to Oscar nominations – Gianfranco Rosi’s Fire At Sea,...

Exclusive: Kino Lorber SVP of Theatrical Acquisitions & Distribution Wendy Lidell will depart the company at the end of June following a great eight year run at the indie distributor.

The company’s Chief Revenue Officer Lisa Schwartz will oversee theatrical distribution and acquisitions in the interim and will continue to report to President Ed Carroll. Reporting to Schwartz will be SVP Marketing and Communications Nicholas Kemp, VP Press and Publicity Kate Patterson, VP Theatrical Distribution & Repertory Acquisitions George Schmalz, and Director Theatrical Distribution Maxwell Wolkin.

Schwartz and Carroll, former top executives at AMC Networks, joined Kino Lorber in early 2023.

Lidell has been at Kino Lorber since 2016, overseeing all theatrical acquisitions and distribution efforts and shepherding three documentaries to Oscar nominations – Gianfranco Rosi’s Fire at Sea, Talal Derki’s Of Fathers and Sons most recently Kaouther Ben Hania’s decorated Four Daughters.

Other theatrical releases on her watch include Long Day’s Journey Into Night,...

1984 signaled the beginning of the “Coming of Age” trilogy that began with “A Summer in Grandpa's”. The film is based on Chu Tien Wen's childhood memories, one of the most renowned theatrical writers and novelists of the country. The protagonists are two kids, a fact that established Hou's ability to direct kid actors. The movie won a Best Director award at the 1984 Asia-Pacific Film Festival, the Golden Montgolfiere award (tied with The Runner (1984)) at the 1985 Nantes Three Continents Festival, and the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury – Special Mention at the 1985 Locarno International Film Festival. It was also the first work of the Taiwanese auteur to screen in the US, in 1986. Also of note is the fact that Hou cast Edward Yang in a brief role, with Yang returning the favor by casting Hou in his film “Taipei Story”

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Two city kids,...

Since the beginning of his career, Hirokazu Koreeda became recognized for his films representing the family cinema genre—intrinsically linked with the favorite of Western critics among Japanese filmmakers: Yasujiro Ozu. This was already the case with Koreeda's 1995 debut film, “Maboroshi no hikari”, a visual meditation on loss and the passing of time, told through the eyes of a single mother who has just lost her beloved husband. Since the early 1960s and the death of Yasujiro Ozu, Western critics seemed to be engaged in an excruciating quest to find a new ancestor to Ozu's poetics of cinema—and finally, there was one; Koreeda became the new Ozu.

The similarity is there—a contemplative approach towards the mundane which translates to something more transcendental; a patient gaze onto the bonds of the family set against the backdrop of a modernizing world and changing traditions; or a talent to put...

The Mauritanian master Aberrahmane Sissako reached glory with his previous feature, the foreign-language Oscar-nominated “Timbuktu” (2014). It was a harrowing, beautiful and potent film that hit the soft spot in combining the no-nonsense panoramic overview of the Islamist occupation of the titular city and the humaneness of the resistance to it. Ten years later, Sissako is, once again re-united with his co-screenwriter Kessen Tall, back on the festival circuit with his attempt at the globe-trotting cinema called “Black Tea”. It premiered at the competition of Berlinale and continued its tour at the Belgrade International Film Festival – Fest.

Black Tea screened at Berlin International Film Festival

Sissako opens his film with a sequence set, but not actually elaborated in any way, at a mass wedding ceremony in Abijan, the capital of Ivory Coast. Like other brides, Aya (Nina Melo) is excited, but when her time comes to say the magic words, she makes a monologue,...

Much is open-ended about this realist yet dreamlike exploration of midlife crisis and regret set in Vietnam

The question of what the title means, or what the movie means, remain open; even so, this is a quietly amazing feature debut from 34-year-old Thien An Pham, born in Vietnam and based in Houston, Texas. It’s a jewel of slow cinema set initially in Saigon and then the mountainous, lush central highlands far from the city; it is a zero-gravity epic quest, floating towards its strange narrative destiny and then maybe floating up over that to something else. It’s compassionate, intimate, spiritual and mysterious in ways that reminded me of Tsai Ming-liang or Edward Yang.

Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell is presented in a calm, unforced realist style with many long, unbroken middle-distance shots, with closeups a rarity. There is a flashback and a dream-sequence presented in exactly the same way,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For regular updates, sign up for our weekly email newsletter and follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSHard Truths.Mike Leigh’s forthcoming Hard Truths will reunite him with Marianne Jean-Baptiste, star of Secrets and Lies (1996). It will be the British director’s first film set in the present day since Another Year (2010).Jia Zhangke has divulged some details of We Shall Be All, now in the early stages of post-production. In production off and on since 2001, the film will be his first feature since Ash Is Purest White (2018). “I travelled with actors and a cameraman to shoot, without a script, without any obvious story,” the director told Variety. “This is a work of fiction, but I have applied many documentary methods.”Robert Bresson’s rarely seen Four Nights of a Dreamer is being restored by MK2 Films, set for a spring release.

“Kuei-mei, a Woman” is a cinematic gem that has not only earned critical acclaim in its time but has also left an indelible mark on the history of filmmaking. Selected as the Taiwanese entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 58th Academy Awards and recipient of the Golden Horse Award for Best Feature Film in 1985, Chang Yi's movie has garnered international recognition for its profound portrayal of sacrifice and perseverance. Nowadays, its themes and cinematography resonate even more.

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Set against the backdrop of post-revolution Taiwan in the 1950s, the movie unfolds the poignant narrative of its titular character, brilliantly brought to life by the esteemed actress Yang Hui-shan. Born into poverty in mainland China, Kuei-mei embarks on a journey fraught with challenges as she migrates to Taiwan and enters a marriage of convenience with an alcoholic widower.

German filmmaker Nele Wohlatz’s “Sleep With Your Eyes Open,” which had its world premiere on Saturday in the Encounters section of the Berlin Film Festival, tells a story about the search for a sense of belonging in a foreign country.

It starts with Kai, a young Taiwanese woman with a broken heart, arriving at a Brazilian beach resort for a holiday. Here, her life crosses paths with a group of Chinese migrants living in a luxury tower block, and in particular a young woman called Xiaoxin, who accepts her fate, and Fu Ang, who is working in an umbrella store when we meet him but harbors ambitions to become wealthy.

Xiaoxin writes about her life on a series of postcards, which are never sent and are eventually discarded. Kai finds them and reads them, provided a connection between the two women. At one point, we stop following Kai and...

Two Taiwan-based production companies with features in this week’s Berlin Film Festival have joined forces to launch new venture, Long Hu Bao × An Attitude.

Taiwan’s Yi Tiao Long Hu Bao International Entertainment, is one of eight co-producers on main competition film “Shambhala,” from Nepal’s Min Bahadur Bham.

Yi Tiao Long Hu Bao is also one of three co-producers on Brazilian title “Sleep With Your Eyes Open” (aka “Dormir de olhos abertos”) directed by Nele Wohlatz, which debuts in Berlin’s Encounters section.

While the two companies will remain legally separate, the collaboration also brings together Lee Lieh, Roger Huang, and Justine O., three of Taiwan’s most experienced producers. They aim to continue their expansion into international co-productions and span both film and TV.

“We see it as three generations of producers becoming a strong alliance that joins together the resources of Asia – Edward Yang’s Taiwanese new wave,...

“The last thing I hate is that life always forces us to keep moving forwards.”

In the aftermath of the New York Film Festival, reporter Vincent Canby wrote an article about the films of the festival he aptly named “Why Some Films Don't Travel Well”. Works such as Zhang Yimou's “Red Sorghum”, Andrei Konchalovsky's “Asya's Happiness” and Hou Hsiao-Hsien's “Daughter of the Nile” are mostly relevant thanks to their “sociology factor” Canby begins his article, an aspect that these works are and have been applauded for around the world while as films themselves they are not that interesting. Hou Hsiao-Hien, one of the most popular directors of Taiwanese New Cinema along with Edward Yang, was still trying to find a cinematic language for his films, one which strongly resembled the works of Yasujiro Ozu in terms of style and content, the sense of resignation, as he writes...

The East Asia Film Festival Ireland (Eaffi) and the Irish Film Institute (Ifi) are delighted to announce the programme for the eighth edition of the festival, which will take place this year from Thursday, March 7th to Sunday, March 10th, bringing works from prominent and

emerging writers and directors from diverse cultural and social backgrounds across East Asian cinema to audiences in Ireland. These films reflect on individual and communal experiences, and observe and explore life and relationships in an eclectic mix of fiction, documentary, and classic titles. At the programme's centre is a season of rare screenings by auteur filmmaker Edward Yang (1947–2007) – four masterworks from one of the most iconic figures, alongside Hou Hsiao-Hsien, of the Taiwanese New Wave film movement of the early 1980s.

Each of the four special screenings will be introduced by Taiwanese film producer Chuti Chang. They will be:

A Confucian Confusion , which charts the...

Acclaimed Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf will serve as jury president at the 30th Vesoul International Film Festival of Asian Cinema (Viffac), which runs from February 6-13.

Held in France, this year’s edition will spotlight Taiwanese cinema and Malayalam-language films from India. A total of 92 films from 29 countries will be screened.

Makhmalbaf’s works include A Moment of Innocence (1996), which won a special mention at the Locarno Film Festival, as well as Kandahar (2001), which won the Ecumenical Jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

Other jury members at Viffac this year include Taiwanese director Zero Chou, winner of the Golden Bear at the Berlinale in 2007, Iranian actress Fatemed Motamed-Arya and Japanese actor Shogen.

There are 17 films across the fiction and documentary competitions, which come from China, Korea, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Bangladesh, Nepal and Taiwan. There are two world premieres, five international premieres, six European premieres and four French premieres.

Taiwan and India in the spotlight at the 30th Vesoul Iff of Asian Cinema

The 30th Vesoul International Film Festival of Asian Cinema will feature 92 films, including 52 never-before-seen films from 29 countries, under the banner of commitment!

Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Iranian director with 60 international awards to his credit, is President of the Jury. Other members include Taiwanese director Zero Chou, winner of the Golden Bear at Berlin 2007, Fatemed Motamed-Arya, the most awarded Iranian actress in the history of Iranian cinema, and Japanese actor Shogen, cinema ambassador at the Sea-Okinawa Pan-Pacific International Film Festival.

The 17 films in the fiction and documentary competitions come from China, Korea, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Bangladesh, Nepal and Taiwan. Four are French premieres, six European premieres, five international premieres and two world premieres.

Feature Film Competition :

China: All Ears by Liu Jiayin – China (Tibet): The Snow Leopard by Pema Tseden – Korea: Work to...

As we have mentioned many times recently, Korea's Weird Wave is definitely having a moment right now, with titles that can only be described with the particular word coming one after the other. Slow-burning, road movie of sorts, family drama of sorts, winner of the Cgv Arthouse Award at the latest Busan International Film Festival “Chorokbam” also falls under the “category”.

“Chorokbam” is available from Echelon Studios

Starting during a night when everything seems to be painted in green, the Dad of a three-membered family who works as a night security guard discovers a cat hanging by its neck on a rope. The image shocks him, but still continues his routine, of returning to their cramped apartment just as Mom leaves to dry peppers in the sun in the morning, with the red color dominating the images this time. As soon as she returns, a rather dysfunctional relationship is revealed,...

A UK-based Chinese film festival that strives to take on the responsibility of promoting the importance of a mutual understanding of diverse cultures between greater China and the UK, Mint Chinese Film Festival (Mint Cff) is back for its fresh 2nd edition from Feb 1-4 at Keswick Alhambra Cinema to welcome the Year of Dragon, showcasing the best and most pioneering Chinese films!

Mint is the first women-organised Chinese film festival in the UK and aims to curate for underrepresented voices, images, and stories, actively discovering and supporting Chinese creators, emerging women filmmakers and artists, and gender-diverse directors.

Founded by Chinese film curator Yixiang Shirley Lin and Keswick Alhambra Cinema's co-owner Dr Carol Rennie, Mint is a year-round active film festival; it not only holds an annual Chinese film festival but also curates and organises pop-up film screenings and relevant cultural and artistic events in various venues across the UK...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For regular updates, sign up for our weekly email newsletter and follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSGuy Maddin’s next film, Rumours, recently wrapped production in Hungary. The ensemble piece is led by Cate Blanchett and Alicia Vikander, who play world leaders who end up stranded in a forest during the annual G7 summit. Maddin has shared a breathless, spoof press release (below) announcing the film, describing the project as “an elevated dramedy and erotico-political threnody cum sylvan moodbank.”Paul Thomas Anderson is also at work on something new. So far, all we know is that his project is set in the present day and will star Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, and Regina Hall. Production begins in California later this year.Recommended VIEWINGOne of the most exciting rediscoveries of the 2023 Il Cinema Ritrovato festival was the restoration of David Schickele’s Bushman...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Film at Lincoln Center

The massive Edward Yang retrospective, New York’s first in a dozen years, has its final weekend with A Brighter Summer Day, Yi Yi, and new restorations of A Confucian Confusion and Mahjong.

Roxy Cinema

Claire Donato presents Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me on 35mm and Preminger’s Bonjour Tristesse, while The Canyons screens on Saturday and Saturday.

IFC Center

Céline and Julie Go Boating and Casablanca and Alphaville have runs; Donnie Darko, Black Christmas, Once and Future Queen, and Goldfinger have late showings.

Museum of Modern Art

The comprehensive Ennio Morricone retrospective comes to a close with The Untouchables and 1900.

Film Forum

A Leon Ischai retrospective begins while The Third Man continues a 75th-anniversary 35mm run; Days of Heaven (read our interview with Brooke Adams) plays on Sunday with 101 Dalmations.

The post NYC Weekend Watch: Mahjong,...

By Goh Ming Siu

Fade up on a mountain of rocks in a quarry — raw material for construction, for literal nation-building, yet mining also destabilizes the land. The shot tracks along, as we hear a distant rumble – is it a storm on the horizon, far-off construction, or something more ominous? The camera comes to rest on an empty frame. The protagonist, Lim Cheng Soon (Peter Yu) and his brother Cheng Boon (Johnson Choo) rise from below, where they've been digging for rocks, up into frame.

An opening that encapsulates a film where everything important is operating under the surface, a film that needs one to excavate it for a meaningful experience. Hemingway-esque in its sparseness but also in its hidden richness and depth, much like the films of Edward Yang. We think we know what's going to happen, because we're familiar with the tropes. Yet at every turn, we're...