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This is a nifty indie weekend with a busier and higher profile limited release schedule than we’ve seen in some time. The Ballad of Wallis Island, The Friend, Grand Tour, Viet And Nam, Holy Cow and documentaries The Encampments, which is super timely, and Secret Mall Apartment are peppering theaters in major markets.

Many have festival imprimaturs from Cannes on down and great Rotten Tomatoes critics scores. In moderate release, Sony Pictures Classics is out with Steve Coogan in The Penguin Lessons.

Limited openings: Watermelon Pictures debuts Macklemore-produced The Encampments at the Angelika, which has been adding shows, and the doc looks like it’s heading to a super opening of $70+k at one location. The distributor moved up the release date given the timeliness of the film, which follows students at Columbia University who launched a movement protesting the war in Gaza. It features detained student activist...

Editor’s Note: This review was originally published during the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. Strand Releasing opens “Viet and Nam” on Friday, March 28.

A number of films at this year’s Cannes have arrived at the festival surrounded in controversy. Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis” for its main cast, featuring an actor who’s soon set to go on trial for alleged assault and sexual battery. Fellow main competition title “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” meanwhile, was shot illegally in Iran, leading to director Mohammad Rasoulof being sentenced to eight years in prison and a flogging by the country’s authorities, who pressured the festival to pull the feature from competition; Rasoulof has since fled his home country for Europe.

Flying a little under the radar in Un Certain Regard is a Vietnamese film that has been banned in Vietnam before even receiving its world premiere at Cannes. The second...

Note: This review was originally published as part of our 2024 New York Film Festival coverage. Việt and Nam opens in theaters on March 28 from Strand Releasing.

“Leave the light on. It’s easier for me to dream.”

The opening shot of Việt and Nam, writer-director Trương Minh Quý’s sophomore film, is a feat of cinematic restraint. Nearly imperceivable white specs of dust begin to appear, few and far between, drifting from the top of a pitch-black screen to the bottom, where the faintest trace of something can be made out in the swallowing darkness. The sound design is cavernous and close, heaving with breath and trickling with the noise of running water. A boy incrementally appears, walking gradually from one corner of the screen to the other. He has another boy on his back. A dream is gently relayed in voiceover. Then, without the frame ever having truly revealed itself,...

In the aftermath of the Oscars, a new slate of blockbusters and indie films are hoping to drum up excitement about what 2025 has to offer in the cinema landscape.

Starting with the weekend’s wide releases, Jason Statham is back as a leading action star in “A Working Man” alongside David Harbour, Eva Mauro and Michael Peña. From “Suicide Squad” director David Ayer, the action thriller follows a man who leaves behind his military career to lead a quieter life in construction. But when traffickers kidnap his manager’s daughter, he finds himself entangled in a path of corruption and deception unlike anything he’s seen before.

Following its buzzy premiere at SXSW with killer unicorns, “Death of a Unicorn” from A24 is now releasing in theaters. The genre-bending story follows a father and daughter, played by Jenna Ortega and Paul Rudd, as they accidentally run over a unicorn while...

Editor’s note: The following interview contains some spoilers for “Việt and Nam.”

Glistening stars hanging in the dark. A soaring love hidden hundreds of meters underground. Fragile bodies intertwined on a hard rock floor. Trương Minh Quý’s third feature is a story of impossible things merging and blurring, binary opposites that coalesce into something new.

That’s especially true of our titular lovers, Việt and Nam, whose romance we first encounter deep below the earth’s surface in a Vietnamese coal mine. The pair (played by Thanh Hai Pham and Duy Bao Dinh Dao) are so similar that they soon emerge as one (and are even credited as such at the end), yet they both want very different things that threaten to pull them apart.

Even the film itself is a whole split in two, divided by a title card that finally arrives around 55 minutes in. This is a story of queer love,...

The 18th annual Asian Film Awards (Afa) announced the winners and special award recipients at a ceremony held at the West Kowloon Cultural District’s Xiqu Centre in Hong Kong on March 16, 2025. Sixteen competitive prizes and five honorary prizes were given out. The Afa ceremony featured a glamorous Red Carpet and Award Ceremony attracting participants from all over Asia, and was a great success. At this year’s Afa, the Hong Kong actor-director Sammo Hung served as the jury president leading other jury and voting members composed of filmmakers from around the world in selecting the winners. Daishi Matsunaga, along with fellow director Stanley Kwan, served as presenters.

Here are all the awards and nominees of this year’s edition

Best Film

All We Imagine as Light (India, France, Netherlands, Luxembourg)

Black Dog (Mainland China)

Exhuma (South Korea)

Teki Cometh (Japan)

Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In (Hong Kong)

Best...

Payal Kapadia’s Indian co-production “All We Imagine as Light” won best film at the 18th Asian Film Awards in Hong Kong, capping a remarkable journey that began with a Grand Prix win at Cannes last year.

Yoshida Daihachi won best director for “Teki Cometh,” while Sean Lau won best actor for “Papa” and Shahana Goswami best actress for “Santosh.” Sandhya Suri won best new director for “Santosh,” capping a strong year for Indian co-productions at the awards, where the country has been a bridesmaid in recent years.

Honors were evenly spread otherwise, with “Exhuma,” “Stranger Eyes” and “Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In” all collecting a brace of awards each.

Proceedings kicked off with a performance featuring the composer of the film that is the toast of Asia at the moment – “Ne Zha 2,” Chu Wan Pin, alongside Jonathan Wong.

During the awards, Dr. Wilfred Wong, chair of the Asian Film Awards Academy,...

"I should have told him not to go... I've been looking for him for many years."...

Andrew Ahn’s latest feature The Wedding Banquet opens this year’s BFI Flare Film Festival, which runs from March 19 – 30 at the BFI Southbank in London.

It’s a big-ticket title, arriving in London following a debut bow at Sundance with a red-hot cast including Bowen Yang, Lily Gladstone, Kelly Marie Tran, and serves as a sign of the festival’s continued relevance and mainstream appeal.

Currently the UK’s largest queer film event, Flare is also one of the world’s longest-running queer film festivals. It turns 40 next year. The BFI is already planning a series of celebrations to mark the milestone. Highlights from this year’s lineup, however, include screenings of Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s Berlinale title Hot Milk starring Emma Mackey and Vicky Krieps, Lamin Leroy Gibba’s buzzy German series Black Fruit, and Truong Minh Quy’s beloved Cannes title Viet and Nam. The festival will close...

BFI Flare: London Lgbtqia+ Film Festival (March 19-30) has unveiled its full line-up, with 56 features across three strands, exploring subjects such as Kenya’s ballroom scene and the appeal of dating apps.

The programme has films and shorts from 41 countries, with six world premiere features. These include Kenyan filmmaker Njoroge Muthoni’s documentaryHow To Live, which explores Nairobi’s vibrant ballroom scene and celebrates queer African joy.

In Yu-jin Lee’s Manok, the owner of a South Korean lesbian bar must return to her small hometown after clashing with the city’s younger queer community.

Buenos Aires-set comedy drama Few...

CinemAsia Film Festival 2025 presents its full program for the 17th edition, running March 6-11 in Amsterdam. Featuring 38 handpicked films – of which 27 feature films and 11 shorts, including 1 world and 4 European premieres – the lineup spans blockbusters, art-house gems, and independent productions.

Hosted at Eye Filmmuseum, Studio/K, Rialto De Pijp, and Rialto Vu, CinemAsia invites audiences on a cinematic journey through Asia’s rich storytelling, stunning visuals, and diverse cultural perspectives.

Grand Opening & Closing Films

Opening Film – Happyend by Neo Sora (Dutch premiere) – Director present at the festival.

The festival opens with the highly anticipated Happyend by Japanese-American filmmaker Neo Sora. Set in a dystopian near-future Tokyo overshadowed by an impending catastrophic earthquake, this visually stunning film explores identity and friendship in a world dominated by control and uncertainty.

Closing Film – Fly Me To The Moon (Hong Kong 2023) by Sasha Chuk (Dutch premiere) – Director present.

CinemAsia 2025 closes with Fly Me to the Moon,...

Ruben Östlund’s highly anticipated “The Entertainment System Is Down” has added New York and Tokyo-based Cinema Inutile as executive producer, continuing the company’s strategic expansion into larger-scale international projects. The film, starring Kirsten Dunst, Keanu Reeves, Daniel Brühl, Nicholas Braun and Samantha Morton, follows passengers on a long-haul flight forced to confront the horror of boredom when the entertainment system fails.

“I’m very, very excited for the film. It’s going to be a very special one,” Cinema Inutile founder Alex C. Lo tells Variety. Lo, a self-described “long-time admirer” of Östlund’s work, is a frequent collaborator of “The Entertainment System Is Down” producer Philippe Bober, including on Lou Ye’s Cannes-debuting “An Unfinished Film” and Jessica Hausner’s Sitges winner “Club Zero.” “The Entertainment System Is Down” is currently shooting and aims for a 2026 release.

Lo established Cinema Inutile just before the pandemic in late...

“Night Stage,” the gay erotic thriller by Brazil’s Filipe Matzembacher and Marcio Reolon, has been acquired by German distributor Salzgeber, which will release the film in Germany and Austria. The film will world premiere in Berlinale’s Panorama sidebar next week.

M-Appeal is handling international sales for the film, and has released the international trailer.

“We have followed the careers of filmmakers Filipe Matzembacher and Marcio Reolon since their first feature, ‘Seashore,’ premiered at the Berlinale in 2015,” Jakob Kijas from Salzgeber said. “In 2017, we released their miniseries ‘The Nest’ in Germany. Now we are delighted to welcome ‘Night Stage’ in our program – a bold and beautiful drama about love, sex, performances and politics, that takes risks and fully delivers.”

Salzgeber plans to release ‘Night Stage’ theatrically in autumn this year. The film joins the distributor’s upcoming slate alongside “Misericordia” by Alain Guiraudie, “Baby” by Marcelo Caetano (also represented...

Indian director Payal Kapadia’s festival favouriteAll We Imagine As Light is one of the many films backed at an early stage by the International Film Festival Rotterdam’s Hubert Bals Fund (Hbf).

Underlining Hbf’s reach, Wei Liang Chiang and You Qiao Yin’s Cannes Camera d’Or winner Mongrel, Palestinian-Danish filmmaker Mahdi Fleifel’s To a Land Unknown, Trương Minh Quý’s Viet and Nam and Wang Bing’s Youth (Hard Times) and Youth (Homecoming) were other 2024 festival titles to receive development support from the fund.

At a time when industry finance is ever tighter, Hbf has received a welcome boost this year,...

Teams behind this year’s CineMart projects – IFFR’s co-production market – are “very conscious that the world is on fire,” says new head of IFFR Pro Marten Rabarts.

“They needed to be both artistically impeccable and make us feel we can make some kind of difference. Many films spotlight urgent socio-political narratives, exploring themes like authoritarianism, colonialism. We even have near-future dystopias.”

It’s obvious filmmakers are processing their own anxiety about the future, he notes, mentioning Marcelo Gomes and Cao Guimarães’ “Cape of Pleasures” and Cheryl Dunye’s “Black Is Blue.”

“These are both queer filmmakers. There’s real anxiety within the LGBTQ+ community about what the future might look like, particularly with the U.S. move to the right. Cheryl’s based in California, she’s queer royalty and she’s definitely looking at the situation of her community under this new government.”

But it’s not just about quality.

South Korea’s Exhuma has topped the field, earning 11 nominations at the 18th Asian Film Awards, followed by Hong Kong’s Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In with nine nominations.

Hong Kong martial arts legend Sammo Hung will serve as the jury president for the awards, which feature a selection of 30 films from 25 countries and regions, competing across 16 categories. The awards ceremony will take place on March 16 in Hong Kong.

Directed by Jang Jae-hyun, Exhuma gained nominations for Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Newcomer, Best Screenplay, Best Original Music, Best Costume Design, Best Production Design, Best Visual Effects and Best Sound.

Adapted from the novel “City of Darkness” by Yuyi, Hong Kong action blockbuster Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In gained nine nominations, including Best Film, Best Supporting Actor, Best Editing, Best Cinematography, Best Original Music, Best Costume Design, Best Production Design, Best Visual Effects and Best Sound.

South Korean box office hit Exhuma and Hong Kong action blockbuster Twilight Of The Warriors: Walled In lead the nominations for the 18th Asian Film Awards, with a jury led by martial arts icon Sammo Hung.

Supernatural thriller Exhuma, directed by Jang Jae-hyun, leads the pack with 11 nods followed by Soi Cheang’s action thriller Twilight Of The Warriors: Walled In, which received nine nominations.

Scroll down for full list of nominations

Both titles were named in the best film category alongside Payal Kapadia’s Cannes Grand Prix winner All We Imagine As Light; Guan Hu’s Chinese drama Black Dog,...

Martial arts legend Sammo Hung has been tapped as jury president for the 18th Asian Film Awards, while South Korean supernatural thriller “Exhuma” and Hong Kong action pic “Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In” dominate the nominations.

South Korean supernatural thriller “Exhuma,” helmed by director Jang Jae-hyun and marking the return of veteran actor Choi Min-sik, leads with 11 nods including best film, director, actor and actress. The film weaves elements of feng shui and traditional shamanism in its story of an ominous grave investigation.

Hong Kong action film “Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In” follows with nine nominations. Based on Yuyi’s “City of Darkness” novel and set in the 1980s Kowloon Walled City, the film is competing for best film, supporting actor and multiple technical awards.

Soi Cheang’s Hong Kong action film “Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In” follows with nine nominations. Based on Yuyi’s “City of Darkness...

Singapore director Chiang Wei Liang and co-director Yin You Qiao’s “Mongrel,” a portrayal of disenfranchised migrant workers in Taiwan, won Best Asian Feature Film at the 35th Singapore International Film Festival (Sgiff).

The jury praised the film’s “dense, shadowy and violent world” and its innovative approach to depicting contemporary issues of forced migration. The film has previously won awards at the Cannes and the Golden Horse festivals and at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards.

Lou Ye’s “An Unfinished Film” won the newly-revised Audience Choice Award. The docufiction drama follows a director attempting to complete a decade-old project during the Covid-19 pandemic, blending footage from Lou’s previous films with new material. The film previously won Golden Horse and Tokyo FILMeX awards.

In the Asian Feature Film Competition, Vietnamese filmmaker Truong Minh Quy received Best Director for “Viet and Nam,” a queer love story about two coal miners facing separation.

Việt and Nam.The fate of modern Vietnam is inseparable from the image. The war was the first large-scale conflict in human history to be captured on film and disseminated in real time. And yet, in cinema, hegemonic representations in the mold of Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter (1978) or Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979) have engendered a collective derealization in the Western imagination, where Vietnam frequently exists first as a stage for contemporary moral theater and only secondarily as a sovereign nation in its own right; its people are rendered as props, mere shooting targets, denied even a semblance of the on-screen interiority afforded to their foreign counterparts.In the last decade, a growing number of Vietnamese filmmakers have begun asserting agency over how narratives about the country and the lives of its people get told. The recently expanded focus of European filmmaking labs to foster talent explicitly from historically underrepresented regions,...

The 19th Jogja-Netpac Asian Film Festival has wrapped in Yogyakarta (Jogja), Indonesia, with local feature “Yohanna” dominating the Indonesian Screen Awards while Neo Sora’s “Happyend” secured the festival’s top Golden Hanoman Award.

“Yohanna,” directed by Razka Robby Ertanto, collected five honors including best film, director, storytelling, performance, and cinematography (Odyssey Flores). Truong Minh Quy’s “Viet and Nam” took home the Silver Hanoman Award.

In other awards, “Ma – Cry of Silence” by The Maw Naing won the Netpac Award and Geber Award, while Hung Chen’s “When the Wind Rises” secured both the Blencong Award and Jaff Student Award. Behzad Nalbandi’s “Anita, Lost in the News” received a Special Jury Mention.

The festival program featured a masterclass with Taiwan-based auteur Tsai Ming Liang, which attracted filmmakers like Riri Riza, Mira Lesmana, Kamila Andini, and Jaff director Ifa Isfansyah. Three of Tsai’s works were screened: “Vive L’Amour...

Hanoman Award

Hanoman Award is a feature-length competitive program for established directors and upcoming young talent who hold the future of Asian cinema. The first winner will be awarded a Golden Hanoman and runner-up will be awarded a Silver Hanoman.

Amanda Nell Eu, Gina S. Noer and Julien Rejl gave the Silver Hanoman to “Viet and Nam” by Vietnamese Truong Minh Quy and the Golden Hanoman to “HappyEnd” by Neo Sora.

Film Analysis: HappyEnd (2024) by Neo Sora Interview With Neo Sora: The Casting Process Was Classical and Quite Abnormal for Japan Film Review: Viet and Nam (2024) by Minh Quy Truong Netpac Award

Netpac Award aims to read the diverse Asian perspectives from the first or second work of directors who hold the future of Asian cinema.

Arian Darmawan, Intan Paramaditha and Latika Padgaonkar gave the Netpac Award to “Ma – Cry of Silence” by The Maw Naing

Film Review: Ma- Cry of Silence...

Last Updated on December 9, 2024

John Waters’ annual top 10 movies list is always an eclectic one, filled with movies on the fringe that we may have never even heard of, ever a champion for the maligned. But the most interesting addition this year is one that got a lot of attention this year – just for all the wrong reasons.

Taking the #6 spot on his list of the top 10 movies of 2024 for Vulture, John Waters picked Todd Phillips’ much-derided Joker: Folie à Deux, which had all of the hype possible behind it but flopped with critics and audiences. In his write-up, Waters told us just what worked for him: “Finally, a love story I can relate to. So insane, so well thought out, so well directed, so much smoking! It’s Jailhouse Rock meets Busby Berkeley with a 9/11 That’s Entertainment! ending that will make you shake your head in cinematic astonishment.

To say Joker: Folie à Deux didn't meet the expectations of its prequel, 2019's Joker, would be an understatement. The critically panned sequel also flopped at the box office, and while everyone involved is trying to move on, the film has received some support from a Hollywood director.

Filmmaker John Waters of Hairspray and Pink Flamingos fame is a certified fan of Joker 2. The director praised the love story in the sequel and called it one of the best films of 2024, to the detriment of the public and critical opinion of the sequel. The director published a Top 10 list of 2024 films on Vulture, and Joker: Folie à Deux got the sixth spot.

Related Joker: Folie à Deux's Final Box Office Tally Revealed Ahead of Max Debut

Joker: Folie à Deux gives Warner Bros. and DC no reason to smile thanks to its disappointing box office return.

The rest...

As 2024 winds to a close, film fans and critics alike begin to assemble their best of the year lists. And what list would be complete without at least one surprising entry, a film that sticks out like a sore thumb from its brethren. That's certainly the case with John Waters, the Pope of Trash himself and the creator of such gloriously quirky and even disgusting cinematic experiences, like Pink Flamingos, Hairspray, and Serial Mom.

The filmmaker released his annual top 10 list via Vulture, and amid some of the more expected titles, coming in at number six is Todd Phillips' much-maligned musical sequel Joker: Folie à Deux. It's not impossible, but the likelihood the vehicle for Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga will make many any other best-of lists this year is pretty slim. It boasts both a 32% critics and audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, with Glenn Kenney of RogerEbert.com saying...

Todd Phillips' Joker: Folie à Deux will be available to stream on Max from December 13 before hitting HBO linear on December 14 at 8 p.m. Et, and the downbeat musical sequel's final worldwide box office totals are in.

The film grossed just $206 million at the global box office (including $58 million in North America), and is expected to lose at least $150 million to $200 million for the studio.

This is a far cry from the first Joker movie, which took in over $1 billion worldwide and was the highest-grossing R-rated film of all time before Deadpool and Wolverine surpassed it earlier this year.

Some notable names have come out in defence of Joker: Folie à Deux, and we can now add legendary director John Waters to the list.

"Finally, a love story I can relate to," Waters said of the film after sharing his top 10 of 2024 list. "So insane, so well thought out,...

John Waters is wading into the “Joker: Folie à Deux” critical controversy — and is already making a splash.

Waters released his annual list of the best films of the year, as published by Vulture, and bestowed the number six slot to Todd Phillips’ polarizing sequel.

“Finally, a love story I can relate to,” Waters wrote. “So insane, so well thought out, so well-directed, so much smoking! It’s ‘Jailhouse Rock’ meets Busby Berkeley with a 9/11 ‘That’s Entertainment!’ ending that will make you shake your head in cinematic astonishment.”

Waters added, “Stupid critics. Gaga so good. Joker so right. Die, dumbbells, die!”

“Joker: Folie à Deux” received quite the support from subversive auteurs like Quentin Tarantino, who said that director Phillips harnessed the Joker mentality while helming the feature.

“He’s saying fuck you to all of them. He’s saying fuck you to the movie audience. He’s saying fuck you to Hollywood.

One of our favorite traditions in best-of-the-year festivities is a lineup that tends to find a more interesting path than any guilds or critics groups. The wonderfully eccentric John Waters, whose tastes always includes a mix of the unexpected and underseen, hasn’t let us down with his top 10 films of 2024.

Published at Vulture, where one should click over to read thoughts on each, his top 10 is led by Rose Glass’ neo-noir Love Lies Bleeding. Other selections include Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist, Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths, Joker: Folie à Deux (“a love story I can relate to”), and Trương Minh Quý’s Viet and Nam, which will arrive next year. Waters also notes the latest from Pedro Almodóvar, Sean Baker, and Guy Maddin nearly made the cut.

Check out the list below, along with our reviews where available. Waters has also released a pair...

Cannes Critics’ Week has picked the projects that will be part of the 11th edition of Next Step, a programme aimed at helping filmmakers whose short films played at Critics’ Week develop their feature debut.

Since its creation 11 years ago, Next Step has accompanied the development of 96 feature projects, with 39 already completed. Recent Next Step alumni that stood out in the festival circuit include Molly Manning Walker with “How to Have Sex;” Chilean director Felipe Gálvez with “The Settlers;” Valentina Maurel with Locarno winner “I Have Electric Dreams;” as well as Matthew Rankin with Universal Language” which won Directors’ Fortnight Audience Award and represents Canada in the Oscar race.

In 2025, seven new features developed at Next Step are expected to roll out at major festivals, notably Morad Mostafa’s “Aisha Can’t Fly Away Anymore” which won Venice’s industry prize, Final Cut, for a film in post production. Next...

Gold Coast, Australia: The Asia Pacific Screen Academy in strategic partnership with Aw Jewel welcomes its International Jury members, nominees and guests from across the globe to the Gold Coast for the 17th Asia Pacific Screen Awards. The prestigious international film event honours the cinematic excellence of 78 countries and areas of the Asia Pacific and films that best reflect their cultural origins and the diversity of the vast region.

Film industry guests from Australia, Cambodia, Georgia, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Nepal, New Zealand, Philippines, People’s Republic of China, Singapore, Thailand, Türkiye, and the USA are confirmed to participate in the 6th Asia Pacific Screen Forum, to be held from 27 to 30 November.

Australian actress, writer and comedian Nina Oyama (Deadloch, Utopia) is set to host the Gala Awards Ceremony, on the evening of Saturday 30 November in the elegant Diamond Ballroom of The Langham, Gold Coast, on the traditional...

‘Harbin’ To Be Present At Christmas

Poised to be one of the biggest blockbusters of an uneven year for Korean cinema, “Harbin” is finally confirmed to release on Christmas Day (Dec. 25). The movie had its premiere in September at the Toronto International Film Festival but its distributor and financier Cj Enm chose to hold back the commercial release in its native Korea until the busy end-of-year season.

The period action film follows Korean independence activists who launch a daring attack against the Japanese occupying forces in Manchuria (modern-day China).

It is directed by Woo Min-ho and stars Hyun Bin (“Crash Landing on You”), Park Jeong-min (“Decision to Leave”) and Jeon Yeo-been (“Cobweb”), who were all in action at a press launch event Monday in Seoul.

Apple Cider

Netflix has unveiled a trailer for Australian-produced “Apple Cider Vinegar,” a limited series which it will upload in 2025. The six-part drama chronicles the...

QCinema Project Market (Qpm) wrapped this weekend with an awards ceremony in which cash prizes and in-kind services worth $442,000 were handed out to projects from the Philippines and the rest of Southeast Asia.

The event is part of an expanding roster of industry programs at QCinema International Film Festival (November 8-17), one of the Philippines’ major film gatherings, hosted by Quezon City, which is the largest city within the vast metropolitan area of Metro Manila.

While the festival has been running for 12 years, Qpm (November 14-16) was holding its second edition this year, and was joined by the launch of Asian Next Wave Film Forum, a series of panel discussions, masterclasses and case studies of regional co-productions.

Qpm selected 20 projects, including 13 from the Philippines and seven from the rest of Southeast Asia. Winning projects included Myanmar-Indonesia co-production The Beer Girl In Yangon and upcoming works from Filipino filmmakers Martika Ramirez Escobar,...

The Philippines’ QCinema Project Market (Qpm) handed out $442,000 (PHP26M) in grants and co-production support at its closing ceremony on November 16.

Three projects from the Philippines received the QCinema Project Market Philippine Co-Production Grant, each valued at $ 34,000 (PHP2M) – Daughters Of The Sea, from Martika Ramirez Escobar; Heaven Help Us, directed by Eve Baswel, and Sonny Calvento’s Mother Maybe.

The QCinema Project Market – Southeast Asia Co-Production Grant, worth $17,000 (PHP1M) was awarded to Myanmar-Indonesia co-production The Beer Girl In Yangon, directed by Sein Lyan Tun. In addition, co-production grants of $12,000 each were presented to Other People’s Dreams, directed by Singapore’s Daniel Hui, and The Passport, from Malaysia’s Ananth Subramaniam.

Qpm’s industry partners also handed out several awards including Nathan Studios’ development grant of PHP250,000, which went to Secret Cries, while the Taiwan Creative Content Agency presented the $5,000 Taicca Award to Ewa, the sole animation...

Vietnam talent showed strong presence at the 12th QCinema International Film Festival in Quezon City, Philippines, as Trương Minh Quý’s “Viet and Nam” claimed the top prize, while compatriot Dương Diệu Linh’s “Don’t Cry, Butterfly” secured the Grand Jury Prize.

“Viet and Nam,” which made its debut in Cannes Un Certain Regard, emerged victorious in the Asian Next Wave competition. The jury, comprising Babyruth Villarama, Gabor Greiner, Ming-Jung Kuo and Nguyen Le, praised the film for “conjuring the haunting presence of trauma and memories that are embedded within the landscape, and tenderly following a romance that unfolds deep within the coal mines.”

“Don’t Cry, Butterfly,” Dương’s debut feature, follows a middle-aged wife who, upon discovering her husband’s infidelity, embarks on a mystical journey in search of a better life. The film previously won three prizes at Venice.

Elizabeth Lo took home the Best Director award for “Mistress Dispeller,...

Singapore International Film Festival (Sgiff) has unveiled the full programme for its 35th edition, which includes honorary awards for Taiwanese actors Lee Kang-sheng and Yang Kuei-mei, and the launch of a Sgiff Industry Days conference.

Set to run from November 28 - December 8, the festival will continue to champion local and regional voices, with Asian cinema representing 80% of the line-up. The full selection comprises 105 films from 45 countries and features recurring themes of migration and displacement as well as the influence of technology on the medium of film.

The Asian Feature Film Competition, the festival’s main competition section, showcases nine features by promising directors across Asia,...

On October 22, 2024, the QCinema International Film Festival announced its much-anticipated lineup for this year, with The Gaze as its central theme. With 76 titles—22 short films and 55 full-length features—spanning across 11 distinct sections, the festival invites audiences to explore diverse perspectives through film. The Gaze seeks to challenge and expand how we view the world, from traditional masculine and feminine perspectives to new and transformative ways of seeing.

Quezon City Mayor Maria Josefina Belmonte officially opened the occasion, emphasizing QCinema’s vital role in advancing the city government’s cultural policies. She highlighted the festival’s contribution to Quezon City’s vision for sustainability and environmental friendliness, underscoring the partnership between the city and the festival to fulfill these goals.

The 12th edition of QCinema will open with Directors’ Factory Philippines, an omnibus film project in collaboration with Cannes Directors’ Fortnight. The project features four films created by Filipino directors alongside filmmakers from neighboring countries.

The Philippines’ QCinema International Film Festival has locked its 12th edition lineup, with Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s “Cloud” — Japan’s submission for the 97th Academy Awards — set to close the November event. The festival opens with “Directors’ Factory Philippines,” an eight-filmmaker omnibus collaboration with Cannes Directors’ Fortnight that pairs Filipino directors with counterparts from across Asia.

The omnibus features four films: Eve Baswel and Malaysia’s Gogularaajan Rajendran direct “Walay Balay”; Maria Estela Paiso teams with India’s Ashok Vish for “Nightbirds”; Arvin Belarmino collaborates with Cambodia’s Lomorpich Rithy on “Silig”; and Don Eblahan partners with Singapore’s Tan Siyou for “Cold Cut.”

The Quezon City-based fest will unspool 77 titles, including 55 features and 22 shorts, across 11 sections under this year’s theme “The Gaze.”

In the main competition Asian Next Wave, eight features compete: Duong Dieu Linh’s Venice Critics’ Week grand prize winner “Don’t Cry Butterfly”; Nelicia Low’s “Pierce...

Drama Deal

Fremantle has closed a package deal with Spanish streamer Filmin for a slate of premium drama titles, including Swedish filmmaker Tomas Alfredson’s adaptation of Ingmar Berman’s “Faithless” and BAFTA-winning actress Rebecca Hall’s thriller “The Listeners,” both of which recently screened in competition at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Also included in the deal are Victor Levin’s Golden Globe-nominated “Alice & Jack,” starring Domhnall Gleeson and Adrea Riseborough; Series Mania best script winner “Herrhausen – The Banker and the Bomb”; and Series Mania audience award winner “Little Bird.”

“We’re deeply honored to add such high-quality titles to our eclectic catalog, which blends A-list actors and directors with independent productions of great merit,” said Filmin Head of Content and Editorial Director Jaume Ripoll. “Spanish audiences will be captivated by what’s coming next; these are all destined for success.”

Berlin Bonanza

The Berlinale‘s World Cinema Fund...

Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light and Dea Kulumbegashvili’s April head the nominations for the 17th Asia Pacific Screen Awards (Apsa), each securing nods in five categories.

Both will compete for best film, best director, best screenplay, best cinematography and best performance at the awards, which will be presented on November 30 at a ceremony on Australia’s Gold Coast.

Scroll down for full list of nominations

All We Imagine As Light, billed as an ode to nocturnal Mumbai, premiered in Competition at Cannes, where it won the festival’s grand prix. April, the story of a Georgian ob-gyn who faces accusations,...

Mumbai Film Festival has announced the 11 titles selected for its South Asia competition, the main competitive section of the festival, which includes the UK’s Oscars submission, Sandhya Suri’s Santosh, making its South Asian premiere.

The line-up also includes Nepal’s Oscars submission, Min Bahadur Bham’s Shambhala, along with one other Nepali title – Deepak Rauniyar’s Pooja, Sir – and Bhutanese title Agent Of Happiness, directed by Arun Bhattarai and Dorottya Zurbo.

Indian titles in the competition include Rima Das’ Village Rockstars 2, which recently won a Jiseok award at Busan International Film Festival; multiple award-winner Girls Will Be Girls, by Shuchi Talati; Raam Reddy’s The Fable and Midhun Murali’s Kiss Wagon (see full line-up below).

The non competitive Focus South Asia section is screening ten features and 13 shorts, including a title from Afghanistan – Roya Sadat’s The Sharp Edge Of Peace – and a short film from Myanmar,...

Japan’s leading indie film festival, Tokyo Filmex (November 23-December 1) has unveiled the line-up for its competition, opening and closing films, and other sections.

The festival, which marks its 25th year in 2024, will open with Jia Zhang-Ke’s Caught By The Tides, which played in competition at this year’s Cannes, and close with Hong Sang-soo’s By the Stream, for which actor Kim Min-hee won the Pardo for best performance at Locarno.

The 10 competition titles include the Georgian film April, directed by Dea Kulumbegashvili, which won the special jury prize at Venice this year; Girls Will Be Girls, the...

by Cláudio Alves

In the darkness of the movie theater, filmmakers can conjure images the audience has never dreamed of. Sometimes, they reveal the impossible, dreams that only exist on the silver screen, that looking glass in endless molten metamorphosis. They can reflect the audience back to themselves and the world, too. Sometimes, they're the sweet secrets within your heart or fears you never even knew you had. The power of image-making cannot nor should it be underestimated. Watching Trương Minh Quý's Viêt and Nam, I felt such power, the wonder and awe.

And it all starts underground, at the bottom of a mine. It starts somewhere where death waits, yet freedom blossoms. It's a trip down to hell that leads to paradise, temporary as it may be…...

Two Vietnamese-flavored films in prominent festival slots this year have put the spotlight on the country’s emerging indie cinema scene.

A discussion in Busan on Saturday highlighted the sector’s behind-the-scenes struggles, which center on ever-changing financing options, limited distribution and censorship.

“Now is the best time to be a Southeast Asia filmmaker. We can now produce without Europe. That was not possible ten years ago,” said Bianca Balbuena, the Philippines-based lead producer on “Viet and Nam” the Truong Minh Quy-directed gay drama that debuted in Cannes this year.

“More people are getting opportunities to make films. Festivals are starting up in Vietnam too But still there is a discrepancy between festival aspirations and the reality for independent filmmakers,” said Truong in a video message. “Censorship is too heavy. Domestic [Vietnamese] support for independent film is none.”

“Viet and Nam” was 12 years in the making and was structured as a multinational co-production.

In the opening moments of Truong Minh Quy’s third feature Viet and Nam, a svelte figure emerges from one corner of the frame and glides to another. He seems like an apparition, an unreal entity wading through an enveloping blackness. White flakes float around him, dotting the dark expanse like stars against a night sky. When the shrill whine of a bell interrupts the constructed reverie, a more realistic scene comes into focus: Two men rush to button up their shirts and resume their work.

Viet and Nam, which premiered at Cannes in May in the Un Certain Regard sidebar before bowing this week at New York Film Festival, is a dreamy observation of romantic devotion and haunted histories. Its protagonists — Viet, played by Dao Duy Bao Dinh, and Nam, played by Pham Thanh Hai — are lovers whose relationship blooms in the underground corridors of a mine in northern Vietnam.

Illustrations by Maddie Fischer.A camel, it has been said, is a horse designed by committee. This seems wrong, though, since it assumes that a horse was the initial objective, and that the camel resulted from too many incompatible interests and desires. In fact, the camel is perfectly equipped for what it needs to do, and if that camel finds itself having to step into a horse’s position, that speaks more to poor planning and shortsighted decision-making than to the nature of the camel itself. Nevertheless, the point of this aphorism is to suggest that you get something weird and nonfunctional when you allow too many people to have their say. But are these outcomes really that strange? What you get is more likely to be the sort of compromise that pleases no one. The Affordable Care Act is national health care by committee. Oprah’s Book Club is literature by committee.

The 68th BFI London Film Festival has just announced the line-up and – as always – a wide variety of Asian films is included in the vast Programme. Over 12 days, the Lff will showcase 255 works from 80 countries, featuring 64 languages and including 112 projects made by female and non-binary filmmakers.

The London Film Festival, officially called the BFI London Film Festival is organised annually by the British Film Institute (BFI) since 1953. It is the UK’s largest public Festival of its kind and is visited by thousands of film enthusiasts who have the the ability to see films, documentaries and shorts from all over the world. The festival will take place at London’s BFI Southbank and The Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, as well as cinemas and venues across central London, and will run from 9 to 20 October 2024.

All the info about tickets and booking are Here.

And now, let’s browse the...

That Truong Minh Quy’s new queer romance-cum-sociohistorical lament Viet and Nam was banned by the country whose name forms its title will probably surprise few Western audience members. And yet, it reportedly wasn’t the central relationship between two young men that was the sticking point for Vietnamese censors but, rather, the film’s “gloomy, deadlocked and negative view” of the country and its denizens. Which probably says as much for the increased stature of LGBTQ+ visibility on the global stage as it does about the troublesome uptick in reactionary nationalism as the world’s collective migrant crisis continues to widen in scope, which very well could threaten to diminish the progress made on the former.

As the film opens, Viet and Nam are shown working alongside each other in the dark yet twinkling depths of a mine, caked in soot and blithely musing about just how much coal dust their lungs can hold.

Throughout the years, and at least to the people who do not deal extensively with Vietnamese cinema, the local movie industry was almost exclusively represented by Tran Anh Hung, whose films like “Cyclo”, “The Scent of Green Papaya” and “Vertical Ray of the Sun” are the first that come to the mind of any cinephile. However, the Camera D’or for best first feature film Pham Tien An won at the 76th Cannes Film Festival for “Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell” showed that there might be more to local cinema than the aforementioned director, who did won Best Director for “The Taste of Things”, in a production though, that is exclusively French.

Furthermore as Le Chou wrote in an article published last year in Asian Movie Pulse, “For the first time in modern Vietnam cinema since the establishment of its box office tracking, six local films topped the Vietnam box...

Arthouse distributor Strand Releasing has taken North American rights for Norwegian filmmaker Dag Johan Haugerud’s “Love,” which makes its world premiere on Sept. 6 in the main competition of the Venice Film Festival. M-Appeal is handling world sales for the film.

“Love” is the latest entry in Haugerud’s “Sex,” “Love” and “Dreams” trilogy, which delves into modern relationships and intimacy. “Sex,” the first instalment, premiered at the Berlinale.

Strand, which celebrates its 35th anniversary this year, previously acquired “Sex,” and will release both films theatrically in spring 2025.

Jon Gerrans, co-president of Strand, said: “Haugerud has crafted a wonderfully intelligent, provocative and unique approach to personal, adult relationships, with a sly wink toward our own attitudes toward sex, love and desire.”

“Love” tells the story of Marianne, a pragmatic doctor, and Tor, a compassionate nurse, who both avoid conventional relationships. One evening, after a blind date, Marianne encounters Tor on the ferry.

Vietnamese cinema’s profile has been on the rise at major international film festivals of late. Debut director Phạm Thiên Ân won Cannes’ Caméra d’Or prize in 2023 with his meditative drama Inside the Yellow Cacoon Shell, and Trương Minh Quý brought the country back to the French festival this year with the well-received romantic drama Viet and Nam. Next up, the 81st Venice Film Festival, opening Aug. 28, will add a strong female voice to this budding Vietnamese new wave with the premiere of Don’t Cry, Butterfly, directed by another first-timer, Dương Diệu Linh.

A metaphysical drama (see its first trailer, below), the new film follows Tam (Lê Tú Oanh), a diligent middle-aged wedding venue worker who learns that her husband has been cheating on her when a live TV broadcast of a soccer match catches him on camera in the stands with his mistress. Determined to win back her...