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At the awards ceremony of China’s First International Film Festival (Fiff) on Sunday (July 28), the coveted best narrative film prize went unclaimed due to a lack of “outstanding” or “groundbreaking” titles in competition.

It marks the first time since the launch of the festival in 2006, held high on the Tibetan Plateau in the city of Xining, that the award has failed to be won.

The jury, led by Black Dog director Guan Hu, said in a statement: “The function of the festival is to call out those pioneering works, to discover those who step into higher stages, and to...

Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car was awarded best feature at this year’s Asian Film Awards (March 12), along with prizes for best editing and best original music. The multiple award-winning Japanese film premiered at Cannes film festival in 2021 and also won the Oscar for Best International Feature last year.

Another Japanese filmmaker, Hirokazu Kore-eda, took best director for Broker, the Korean-language film that has also been on an awards streak since premiering at Cannes film festival last year.

Best actress went to Chinese actress Tang Wei for her role in Korean director Park Chan-wook’s Decision To Leave, while Hong Kong’s Tony Leung Chiu-wai took best actor for Philip Yung’s Where The Wind Blows and was also presented with the Asian Film Contribution Award. Decision To Leave was also awarded best screenplay, for a script written by Park and Chung Seo-kyung, as well as best production design.

‘Decision To Leave’ won three and Hirokazu Kore-eda named best director.

The Asian Film Awards (Afa) celebrated its comeback edition in Hong Kong tonight (March 12) and named Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car best film.

The Japanese film, which premiered at Cannes in 2021 and won best international feature at last year’s Oscars, won a further two awards at the AFAs: best editing for Azusa Yamazaki and best original music by Eiko Ishibashi.

Scroll down for full list of winners

Park Chan-wook’s Decision To Leave went into the night as the favourite, with a leading 10 nominations for the South Korean film,...

The much-decorated Japanese drama “Drive My Car” was named the best film Sunday at the Asian Film Awards, defeating hot favorite “Decision to Leave.”

Other notable awards went to Japan’s Hirokazu Kore-eda whose “Broker” debuted at Cannes, but which was largely shunned in his home country.

“Decision to Leave,” which started the evening with ten nominations, was nevertheless rewarded with three awards, best screenplay, best production design and best actress for China’s Tang Wei.

While nominations were geographically diverse, the awards on Sunday skewed heavily towards North East Asia –Japan, Korea and Greater China – to the total exclusion of films from India, Indonesia and The Philippines. Snubs included the exclusion of Indonesia’s “Autobiography” and Happy Salma, both of which have been widely lauded on the festival circuit.

The awards ceremony returned to Hong Kong after detours to Macau and Busan and a Covid hiatus in previous years.

Hamaguchi Ryusuke’s ‘Drive My Car’ secures eight nods.

Park Chan-wook’s Decision To Leave leads the nominations for this year’s Asian Film Awards (Afa) with 10 nods including best film and best director.

Korean films have secured nominations in every category for the 16th edition of the awards, which will return to Hong Kong for the first time in three years, having been hosted in Busan for two years and not held in 2022.

Scroll down for full list of nominations

Korean romantic noir Decision To Leave premiered in Competition at Cannes last May, where Park won best director. As...

Park Chan-wook’s stylish crime drama Decision to Leave leads the nominations for this year’s Asian Film Awards with a sweeping 10 nods, including Best Director and Best Film.

The film’s impressive nominations haul also includes a Best Screenplay nod and acting nominations for leads Park Hae-il and Tang Wei, as well as below-the-line recognition for Cinematography, Editing, Music, and Production Design.

Decision to Leave follows a detective (Park Hae-il) investigating a man’s death in the mountains when he meets the dead man’s mysterious wife, a suspect in the case, and begins a tangled affair. The film debuted at Cannes where Park won the Best Director prize. Korea has also submitted the film as its entry for the international feature Oscar race.

Japanese filmmaker Hamaguchi Ryusuke’s Drive My Car trails with eight nominations. The epic road movie also debuted at Cannes, but in 2021. Elsewhere, Hirokazu Koreeda...

The 20th anniversary edition of the New York Asian Film Festival (Nyaff) closed out an epic 17-day run on Sunday night, after welcoming nearly 100 acclaimed filmmakers, international stars and other notable guests from across Asia and the US, screening over 60 films in-theater at Film at Lincoln Center (Flc) and Asia Society from July 15 – 31, hosting a range of masterclasses and compelling talk sessions, and smashing festival attendance records.

The 20th anniversary lineup included six world premieres, eight international premieres, 20 North American premieres, four US premieres, and 15 East Coast/New York premieres, showcasing the most exciting new action, comedy, drama, thriller, romance, horror, and art-house films from Hong Kong, Japan, China, South Korea, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Taiwan, Thailand, Mongolia, Singapore, and the United States.

Prior to the screening of the Nyaff Closing Film, time-travel sci-fi epic Alienoid, from blockbuster Korean director Choi Dong-hoon, the festival announced two Audience Award winners and...

After being in the shadows for far too long, in the last few years Tibetan cinema has found its voice and a representative in director Pema Tseden, whose works have found favour in festival circuits and arthouse audiences around the world. Other directors also have begun to emerge slowly, including Tseden’s own son Jigme Trigley, who makes his debut with “One and Four”, with the father also coming on board as producer.

One and Four is screening on New York Asian Film Festival

Late 1990s. On the Tibetan side of the Himalayas, somewhere in the mountains lives Sanggye, a Forest Ranger. His lonely days are passed trying to stay warm and feeding on the little food that doesn’t get frozen over. Today, he is rather hungover when there is a knock on his door and when he opens it, he is greeted by the barrel of a gun,...

The 20th edition of the festival will return as a full in-person event in July.

The New York Asian Film Festival (Nyaff) has unveiled the full line-up for its 20th edition, which will include honorary awards for Japanese horror director Takashi Shimizu, acclaimed Japanese actor Hiroshi Abe and South Korean rising star Kim Hye-yoon.

This year will mark Nyaff’s fully-fledged return to the big screen, following a virtual 2020 edition and a hybrid event in 2021. More than 60 new and classic titles from Asia, including six world premieres, will be presented as in-person screenings at Film at Lincoln Center (Flc) and the Asia Society,...

The only thing frostier than the snowbound forest landscape of Tibetan director Jigme Trinley’s impressively lean yet woozy thriller debut is the air of mutual hostility and suspicion that exists between its four duplicitous, taciturn characters. “One and Four” may be produced by leading Tibetan auteur Pema Tseden, and may provide yet another great showcase for the befuddled expressivity and shambling physicality of Tseden’s recent go-to star Jinpa. But , albeit one whose stylistic reach might, for the moment, slightly exceed his thematic grasp.

Forest ranger Sanggye (Jinpa), cutting a bulky silhouette in his bedraggled, bearlike sheepskin, wakes up from a drunken stupor in his tiny isolated cabin in the woods. A transistor radio crackles static. His breath fogs in the air. And though he is alone, a bag hanging from the rafters squeaks on its chain as though someone has just moved past it. Already, Wang Jue’s erratic score,...

Four intruders disrupt the wallowing isolation of a forest ranger in debuting Tibetan director Jigme Trinley’s One and Four, an efficient and visually engaging, if slightly familiar, tale of modern encroachment on the natural world and the violence it can bring.

Executive producer Pema Tseden (Trinley’s dad) is easily Tibet’s most prominent filmmaker, having burst on the scene with The Silent Holy Stones in 2005, and star Jinpa is Tseden’s acting equivalent, featured in the director’s Jinpa and Balloon. One and Four is a lightly metaphoric drama about the nature of man as explored through a mistaken-identity pseudo-mystery that could easily come from Tseden’s filmography....

Four intruders disrupt the wallowing isolation of a forest ranger in debuting Tibetan director Jigme Trinley’s One and Four, an efficient and visually engaging, if slightly familiar, tale of modern encroachment on the natural world and the violence it can bring.

Executive producer Pema Tseden (Trinley’s dad) is easily Tibet’s most prominent filmmaker, having burst on the scene with The Silent Holy Stones in 2005, and star Jinpa is Tseden’s acting equivalent, featured in the director’s Jinpa and Balloon. One and Four is a lightly metaphoric drama about the nature of man as explored through a mistaken-identity pseudo-mystery that could easily come from Tseden’s filmography....