News

Interfilm International Short Film Festival Berlin is back with its 38th edition, running from the 15th to the 20th of November 2022. This year the regional focus will be on the cinematography of the Philippines, while the thematic focus Ghosts of Europe looks towards the EU. Interfilm dedicates also a spotlight program to Belarusian filmmaking, which courageously takes on the current regime.

To use the organisers’ words: “The competitions present themselves as usual politically, combative and at the same time empathetic and full of confidence. Great stories meet abstract animation, essayistic forms meet concrete narration. (…) Interforum is the place to discuss and learn, and various special programs and events round off the week dedicated to short film.“

You can find the full programme on the official website here.

Here are all the Asian titles:

International Competition

Anxious Body by Yoriko Mizushiri // France – Japan 2021

A Guitar in the Bucket by Boyoung Kim...

Arvin Alindogan Belarmino’s previous short, “Life’s Pedal” was one of the best shorts we watched during 2020. His most recent work, which he co-directed with Carlo Valenzona, follows the same premises, through an approach, though, that includes at least as much fiction as realism.

“The Guardians” review is part of the Submit Your Film Initiative

The story takes place again in the city slums, beginning with a rather intense fighting scene, where a drunken man is beating his wife because she asked him for money for their baby. The young woman, after getting beaten, manages to retaliate, and escape with her baby in her lap. In another household in the slums, Adeng, a tricycle driver, is also having a fight with his wife, verbal though this time, with her whining and yelling because he is away from home all day long. Adeng leaves cursing, and meets a friend who...

A new documentary component means that the work-in-progress section of this year’s Hong Kong – Asia Film Financing Forum will double from 10 to 20 projects. The selection includes Ruby Yang (“The Blood of Yingzhou District”) and Hou Hsiao-hsien (“The Assassin”) as documentary producers, and Brillante Mendoza (“Kinatay”) as producer on the fiction side.

The Wip program expands the long-running Haf project support operations. It creates a platform for late-stage projects seeking closing funds, post-production partners, distributors, sales agents, festivals and other film-industry services

In its first two years the Wip section of Haf has presented notable films which enjoyed festival success last year. They include “Ayka,” which collected the best actress award in Cannes this year, and “The Man Who Surprised Everyone,” which won the Orrizonti Award for best actress at the Venice festival.

“With the expanded platform, Haf will become the first project market to receive both fictional and documentary...

Filipino filmmaker explores Manila crime underworld in new thriller.

Memento Films International (Mfi) has boarded sales on Filipino director Brillante Mendoza’s Manila-set thriller Alpha, The Right To Kill, ahead of its world premiere in Competition at the San Sebastian Film Festival at the end of September.

Set against the backdrop of the Philippines government’s war on drugs, the thriller revolves around small-time pusher turned informant Elijah and corrupt police officer Espino. The pair provide intelligence for an operation to arrest one of Manila’s biggest drugs kingpins, Abel, in a hideout in the slums of Manila. The operation...