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Festival will be presented at Film at Lincoln Center, the Sva Theatre, Look Cinemas W57, and the Korean Cultural Center of NY.

New York, NY – The New York Asian Film Foundation and Film at Lincoln Center announce first highlights from the 24th edition of the New York Asian Film Festival (Nyaff). Running from July 11 to July 27 across four NYC venues—Film at Lincoln Center, Sva Theatre, Look Cinemas

W57, and the Korean Cultural Center NY, this year’s festival marks Nyaff’s most globally expansive lineup ever. Film at Lincoln Center is proud to host 40 features of the more than 100 films featured in this year’s festival. With over 75 premieres—including eight world premieres—and 17 directorial debuts, the 2025 program showcases its largest slate of premieres and new talent to date, bringing bold, genre-defying films from across Asia. The festival offers New York audiences a rare opportunity to experience the next wave of global cinema,...

Exclusive: Runup Vietnam has lined up local remakes of Korean films The Last Ride and Love Reset, part of the first slate of titles from the burgeoning production and licensing company.

The Last Wish is based on 2016 Korean film The Last Ride and marks the feature directorial debut of Doan Si Nguyen, a screenwriter known for Vietnamese films Sister Sister, Daydreamers and Friday Night Fever.

Starring a trio of rising actors - Avin Lu, Hoàng Hà, and Quỳnh Lý – the story follows an 18-year-old student diagnosed with a rare degenerative disease. Despite the grim reality, two close friends take him...

Exclusive:Best Friend Forever has taken on international sales rights to Japanese fantasy romantic comedy animation ChaOahead of its world premiere in competition at this week’s Annecy International Animation Film Festival.

The Brussels-based company will handle sales outside of Asia, France, North America, Latin America and the UK for the debut feature from Yasuhiro Aoki. Set in a world where humans and mermaids co-exist, the film follows a quiet office worker whose routine life is disrupted when he is offered the chance to marry a mermaid princess named Chao.

GKids has already acquired North American rights while Eurozoom is handling...

Exclusive: Hong Kong star Ekin Cheng and fast-rising actress Natalie Hsu are set to receive honorary awards at the New York Asian Film Festival (Nyaff) next month.

Acclaimed actor and singer Cheng will accept the Star Asia Award on July 14, honouring nearly four decades on screen, while Hsu will receive the Screen International Rising Star Award on July 12, recognising a string of roles in recent major films.

Both most recently starred in Jill Leung’s romantic fantasy drama Last Song For You, which received seven nominations at the Hong Kong Film Awards including a best actress nod for Hsu and...

Beijing-based sales outfit Rediance has acquired worldwide rights to “Mother Bhumi,” the Fan Bingbing-starring drama from acclaimed Malaysian filmmaker Chong Keat Aun.

The company has released an exclusive still from the production as buyers head to the upcoming Cannes Film Market.

The film centers on Hong Im, a widowed farmer who leads a double life – tending paddy fields by day and serving as a ritual healer for villagers by night. When confronted with revelations about her husband’s death, she struggles to maintain equilibrium while seeking resolution for herself and her children.

The cast also includes Taiwan’s Bai Run-yin (Golden Horse winner “Old Fox”) and Hong Kong’s Natalie Hsu (“Suk Mung”) as Hong Im’s son and daughter, respectively.

Chong has established himself as a rising voice in Malaysian cinema. His debut “The Story of Southern Islet” (2020) earned him Best New Director honors at the Golden Horse Awards...

The 49th Hong Kong International Film Festival (HKIFF49) opened tonight at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre, kicking off the 12-day festival with world premiere of Japanese director Nakashima Tetsuya’s The Brightest Sun, followed by the Malaysian feature Pavane for an Infant, directed by Chong Keat-aun and starring Fish Liew, Natalie Hsu and Ben Yuen.

The star-studded Grand Opening ceremony featured appearances by Filmmaker in Focus Louis Koo, director Nakashima Tetsuya and producer Yasunori Naruse from The Brightest Sun, director Chong Keat-aun and cast Fish Liew and Ben Yuen from Pavane for an Infant. Adding to the excitement, renowned Japanese actress Ando Sakura, one of “Face to Face” guests this year, made a special appearance and wished the festival a successful run, making the evening even more memorable.

This year’s festival will showcase nearly 200 films, including six world premieres, two international premieres, and 52 Asian premieres. In addition to the aforementioned film talents,...

The world premiere of The Brightest Sun by Japan’s Nakashima Tetsuya will open the 49th Hong Kong International Film Festival (Hkiff), along with Pavane For An Infant by Malaysia’s Chong Keat-Aun.

Johan Haugerud’s Dreams (Sex Love), winner of the Golden Bear at the Berlinale last month, has been set as the closing film.

The full line-up of the festival, which runs from April 10-21, was announced on the first day of Filmart with Hong Kong star Louis Koo, this year’s filmmaker in focus, and Angela Yuen, the new festival ambassador, in attendance.

Nearly 200 films from 69 countries...

The recent increase in quality of Hong Kong productions is being driven by a combination of family drama and a focus on people with special needs of varying degrees. James Hung definitely includes these two elements in “My First of May”, which also has the additional appeal of including one of the Four Heavenly Kings, Aaron Kwok and one of the best new talents of the local industry, Natalie Hsu. It turns out, however, that just by putting all the right ingredients together, does not guarantee the result will be ideal. Let us take things from the beginning though.

My First of May is screening at Cinemasia

Tang Suk Yin, a former local squash champion, has his life in shambles. He has no money, no prospects, and a nagging mother constantly pestering him. It turns out, though, the she has her reasons, as she is sole caretake of his daughter,...

Anselm Chan’s The Last Dance leads the pack going into the 43rd Hong Kong Film Awards (Hkfa) with 18 nominations.

It is followed by Soi Cheang’s Twilight Of The Warriors: Walled In with 14 nods and Philip Yung’s Papa with 11 nominations. All three films will face off alongside Adam Wong’s The Way We Talk and Ray Yeung’s All Shall Be Well, in both the best film and best director categories.

The 18 nominations secured by The Last Dance is the highest in Hkfa’s history since Teddy Chen’s Assassins And Bodyguards received the same number in 2010. Chan...

by kijA

Last Song for You, the directorial debut of Jill Leung, opened in Hong Kong cinemas during Christmas 2025 and has just screened in international premiere at the 54th International Film Festival Rotterdam, taking place from 30 January – 9 February 2025.

Last Song for You is screening at International Film Festival Rotterdam

What if all you need to turn your life around is a little magic, a song and a teenage girl from your past? In his mid-forties, So Sing Wah’s career as singer and music writer hit rock bottom and he, suffering from insomnia and depression, hit a bottle. When he was ready to let go, he met his high school love Ha Man Huen in hospital. Shortly after she dies, a girl in her teens enters Sing Wah’s existence with a stubborn idea to shake him back to life.

“Last Song for You” is a genuine, straightforward, Cantopop-infused melodrama,...

It was during that year’s midsummer when Ha Man-huen and So Sing-wah met because of a record. What they wanted to know most was how far this pure love could go… In the blink of an eye, decades have passed. Sing-wah (Ekin Cheng) has become a musician but is suffering from a mid-life crisis and seeking to escape from everything. He unexpectedly runs into his old love Man-huen (Natalie Hsu) in the hospital. She is heartbroken to see him changed so much, but unfortunately she is trapped by illness and her life is over. One day, a fifteen-year-old girl, Sonia, shows up before Sing-wah claiming to be Man-huen’s daughter. Sonia reveals her mum’s dying wish was for them to scatter her ashes together in Japan… [Sources: Cinando and Douban]

Jill Leung is an actor, writer and director. This movie is her debut feature and will premiere in Hong Kong on December 20, 2024. Wilson Yip,...

The 37th Tokyo International Film Festival began its 10-day run on October 28 with a colorful Red Carpet event featuring Japanese and international cinema luminaries, ahead of the TIFF Opening Ceremony.

The Red Carpet festivities got underway with brief stage appearances by over 200 filmmakers, actors and luminaries from across sections of the festival, as well as the TIFF juries. They then moved along the 162-meter serpentine walk, stopping for multiple autographs and selfies with fans from far and wide before arriving at the elegant staircase leading into the Tokyo Takarazuka Theater. The theater was built in the style of yesteryear’s grand movie houses, providing the perfect backdrop for TIFF’s Opening Ceremony.

Among the international luminaries making the stroll were Chinese actor Zhao Liying and director Midi Z (at TIFF with the film The Unseen Sister); Hong Kong actor Michael Hui (The Last Dance); Taiwanese director Huang Xi and Hong...

On the occasion of their film “Pavane for an Infant” screening at the Tokyo International Film Festival, director Chong Keat Aun and Natalie Hsu talk to Panos Kotazthanasis about the issue that is the basis of the story, the place of women in Malaysian society, religion, the symbolism in the film, their favorite scene, their future plans and Fan Bingbing.

Following the excellent but also somewhat distant “Snow in Midsummer”, Chong Keat Aun decided to deal with a more ‘down to Earth’ subject, tackling with “Pavane for an Infant” a major social issue Malaysia is facing nowadays, of people abandoning babies, with the number reaching 100 on a yearly basis.

Pavane for an Infant is screening at Tokyo International Film Festival

Lai Sum is a female social worker working in a baby hatch, while she also suffers from some trauma having to do with the treatment of her own baby. She and the other workers have to face the cases of a number of desperate women who abandon their babies there, most of which are born through rape or relationships with married men who don’t want anything to do with them anymore. Eventually Lai Sum comes across Siew Man, a younger woman having experienced something similar, and the two of them become good friends,...

Chinese superstar Fan Bingbing has offered insights into her character in “Mother Bhumi,” the upcoming Malaysian-Italian co-production being directed by Chong Keat Aun.

At a press conference in Kuala Lumpur on Friday, Fan discussed the challenges and rewards of portraying Hong Im, a farmer grappling with loss and the supernatural on the Malaysia-Thailand border.

“My career is to be a performer, that’s what I’m doing,” Fan said. “Actors are good dough, so let’s see what the director is going to make out of it.”

The actress highlighted the importance of authenticity in her approach to the role. “If you play a peasant woman, you can’t have too white skin, with long eyelashes and big eyes,” Fan explained. “We actors have to convince the audience to believe in the character, and present the character’s emotions, feelings, state of mind, and the explosive power of the story.

Chinese sales agent Parallax Films has scooped international sales rights to Malaysian director Chong Keat Aun’s Pavane For An Infant and Japanese documentarian Kaori Oda’s Underground, ahead of their world premieres at Tokyo International Film Festival.

Pavane For An Infant will premiere in the Asian Future competition and stars Malaysia-born Hong Kong-based Fish Liew from 2023 box office hit A Guilty Conscience, rising actress Natalie Hsu (Fly Me To The Moon), Ben Yuen (Suk Suk) and Pearlly Chua (Snow In Midsummer).

The film is set around a baby hatch in Kuala Lumpur where dedicated staff and social workers navigate...

Chinese superstar Fan Bingbing headlines “Mother Bhumi,” the fourth feature film from Malaysian director Chong Keat Aun.

The film centers on a community of farmers living on the Malaysia-Thailand border. It follows Hong Im, a farmer who recently lost her husband under mysterious circumstances. Hong Im uses black magic to address villagers’ everyday issues until she encounters a ghost that reveals a secret about her husband’s death.

The cast also includes Taiwan’s Bai Run-yin (Golden Horse winner “Old Fox”) and Hong Kong’s Natalie Hsu (“Suk Mung”) as Hong Im’s son and daughter, respectively.

Chong’s previous works include “Story of the Southern Islet,” which screened at Locarno and Rotterdam, and earned him the best new director award at the Golden Horse Awards in 2020. His second feature, “Snow in Midsummer,” was selected for Venice Days in 2023 and received nine Golden Horse nominations. Structured as a multinational Asian co-production,...

Hong Kong-based Mei Ah Entertainment brings a slate of new projects to Filmart, featuring stars including Shen Teng, Ma Li and Ekin Cheng.

Untouchable is a $23m crime action thriller set in Macau about a boxing champion-turned-lawyer who can’t stay away from the underworld. This marks the first action film of box-office sensation Shen, known for his comic roles in films such as Goodbye Mr. Loser.

Zhang Yuqi (The Mermaid) co-stars in the film directed by Wang Daqing (One Day) and produced by Shang Ke (Let The Bullets Fly).

Previously known as Twin Blades, Brave Girls pairs leading Chinese...