Giving a child a new name and expecting the old life to disappear with it is simply cruel. A name is supposed to tell us who somebody is, yet in Zou Jing’s A Girl Unknown, names become evidence of how often one young girl has been asked to begin again. Six years old when we…
Category: Asian Cinema
70th BFI London Film Festival: “Fruit Gathering” Review
Life does not offer San Kyi many choices, and although she sometimes thinks about leaving Yangon and returning to her village, she knows there may be very little work waiting for her there, which means the long days she spends in a garment factory are not simply something she can walk away from whenever she…
The A Festival: One Role at a Time – TOP Piyawat on Acting, Preparation and What Comes Next – Exclusive Interview
TOP Piyawat describes preparing for a role in practical terms: learning, rehearsing and beginning again. “Every character is different, so I have to start from zero,” he tells View of the Arts. It is a brief answer, but a useful introduction to an actor whose work already includes romantic series, a crime drama and music…
74th San Sebastián International Film Festival: “Border” Review
Films with very little dialogue can be incredibly powerful because, when words disappear, a filmmaker must trust the images, the actors, sound and silence to tell us what the characters cannot or will not say, and when that works, a room can reveal more than pages of conversation. Ah Biao’s Border, which had its premiere…
Summer IFF 2026: “Days of Being Wild” (1990) Review
It was 1990 when the director of As Tears Go By (1988) released his star-studded second feature. Much of that excitement came from the commercial and critical success of As Tears Go By, Wong Kar-wai’s kinetic yet tender gangster romance starring Andy Lau, Maggie Cheung and Jacky Cheung, and with Carina Lau, Leslie Cheung and…
Summer IFF (2026): “The Imp” (1981) Review
A cult film regarded as one of Hong Kong’s scariest, the restored The Imp (1981), directed by Dennis Yu, was screened at Summer IFF in the section “The Taste of Cult”, bringing an unsettling chill to Hong Kong’s midsummer. Like many fellow Hong Kong New Wave directors, Dennis Yu received part of his education overseas,…
Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF26): In Conversation with Miwa Nishikawa, Director of “Children Untold”
Miwa Nishikawa has spent more than two decades making films about people trying to find their place in a society that does not always know what to do with them. Born in Hiroshima and a graduate of Waseda University, she began her career working with Hirokazu Kore-eda before making her own directorial debut with Wild…
Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF26): “Children Untold” Review
We are taught when wars began and when they ended, who surrendered and who won, but rarely what happened to ordinary people the day after peace was declared. What happened to the children who had no parents to return to, no home, no money and, in many cases, nobody interested in whether they survived? Set…
Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF26): In Conversation with Kim Eo-jin of “The World Before”
For a young actor still at the beginning of his career, Kim Eo-jin already seems to understand what great acting is all about. After appearing in the 2021 web drama The Sweet Blood and later taking a leading role in Fragile in 2024, the model makes his feature-film debut in Yoon Dan-bi’s The World Before….
Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF26): In Conversation with Sim Su-bin of “The World Before”
Sim Su-bin is still at the beginning of her acting career. So far, she has appeared in supporting roles in Korean dramas, alongside her film work, but Yoon Dan-bi’s The World Before gives her the space to show much more of what she can do. As seventeen-year-old Jin, a girl who has never left the…
Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF26): In Conversation with Yoon Dan-bi, Director of “The World Before”
There is nothing overstated about Yoon Dan-bi’s films; her stories take shape through families sharing a home, young people spending time together, conversations that seem ordinary and feelings that are not always easy to explain. Her feature debut, Moving On (2019), follows teenage Okju and her younger brother as they move with their father into…
83rd Venice Film Festival: “Lovers in the Blue Night” Review
Indian women filmmakers have been behind some truly remarkable independent films in recent years. The talent has always been there; the opportunities have not always followed quite so easily, especially when it comes to making that difficult second film. That is one of the reasons it is so exciting to see Anuparna Roy back at…
Asian Cinema at the 70th BFI London Film Festival
The BFI London Film Festival has unveiled the programme for its 70th edition, and Asian cinema will once again form an essential part of the celebration. From long-awaited works by some of the continent’s most respected filmmakers to daring debuts, intimate documentaries and large-scale genre spectacles, this year’s selection reflects the extraordinary breadth of filmmaking…
JIB DREAM FANMEET 7: Joong and Dunk – Roman Adventures, New Challenges and a Little “Dare You to Death” – Exclusive Interview
Rome had plenty of reasons to be loud that weekend, and JIB DREAM FANMEET 7 added a few more. Two days, some very excited fans and a line-up of much-loved Thai stars – the event certainly gave the city something to shout about, and yes, there was a lot of shouting. Joong Archen and Dunk…
