The story of The Heart (Hjärtat, 2018), which was screened during the 15th Crossing Europe Film Festival Linz, starts, like many others, with a broken heart and a poem – and yet, it is not like other stories. The base for the script was a 52-pages-long collection of poems which young and fiery Swedish director, Fanni…
Category: Foreign Films
Dear Ex Review
When Song Zhengyuan dies, he leaves everything he has to the most important person in his life: his gay lover Jay (Roy Chiu). To his wife Liu Sanlian (Ying-Shiuan Hsieh) this comes as a shock, as it leaves nothing for her and their teenage son Chengxi (Joseph Huang). She’s livid, and jumps at the chance to…
71st Cannes Film Festival: Fugue Review
Agnieszka Smoczynska has already made her mark with her feature debut The Lure, which was awarded with the Golden Lion for the best debut in her native country, Poland. On top of that, the film was recognized overseas and received the Special Jury Prize for “a unique artistic vision and design” at the 2016 Sundance Film…
71st Cannes Film Festival: Alone at My Wedding Review
The Bucharest native Marta Bergman directed 4 documentaries about the life of Roma people in Romania, and their stories inspired her to create a fictionalized story that reflects the culture of Roma people and the struggles that the young Roma girls face as they grow up — some trying their best to break away from…
20th Udine Far East Film Festival: One Cut of the Dead Review
Is there anything that has yet to be seen in the zombie film genre? You might think there isn’t, but One Cut of the Dead, which earned itself not only a standing ovation from the audience in Udine, but also missed winning the festival audience-favourite title by a handful of votes, landing on second place,…
20th Udine Far East Film Festival: The Battleship Island Director’s Cut Review
Hashima Island is a small Japanese island, located a mere 15 kilometers off the coast of Nagasaki; it is full of concrete buildings and has a seawall that protects it from the waves. Its shape is the reason for the other name the island is known for: Gunkanjima (Gun-ham-do, 군함도 in Korean) – “Battleship Island”. The…
20th Udine Far East Film Festival: In Conversation with Hwang Jung-min and Ryoo Seung-wan
In South Korea, Hwang Jung-min is a member of the so-called ‘100 Million Viewer Club’. He starred in 2 od the 5 highest domestic grossing films in South Korea (Ode to my Father and Veteran) of all time and it is safe to label him as one of the Big Three; alongside Song Kang-ho and Ryu Seung-ryong, he…
20th Udine Far East Film Festival: In Conversation with Lee Jang-hoon, Director of ‘Be With You’
The volunteers at the 20th Udine Far East Film festival looked in wonder as the doors of the main Teatro Udine theatre opened on Friday night – and half of the visitors came out either red-eyed, wiping their eyes or still quietly sobbing. That was the effect of Be With You, the Korean adaptation of the…
20th Udine Far East Film Festival: Be With You Review
The novels of Takuji Ichikawa are well known to numerous book lovers. His bestselling works have been adapted for the Japanese silver screen a couple of times; Be With You in 2004 by Nobuhiro Doi, and Heavenly Forest in 2006 by Takehiko Shinjo. The film adaptation of Be With You became a huge commercial success with its imaginative, beautiful and emotional love story…
20th Udine Far East Film Festival: In Conversation with Jang Hang-jun, Director of ‘Forgotten’
On the second, scorching hot film festival day in Udine, the audience enthusiastically welcomed the chilling screening of Forgotten (which available also on Netflix), the film that took us for a ride in more ways than one. Only a day later, still not over the tale that gave us all a good scare even though it was…
20th Udine Far East Film Festival: In Conversation with Steel Rain’s Kwak Do-won, Jung Woo-sung and Yang Woo-suk
In 2019, director Lee Han (Thread of Lies, Punch) made a return with a courtroom drama with elements of comedy and thriller that revolves around a defense lawyer (Jung Woo-sung) who is trying to get his client acquitted by getting the only witness to murder, an autistic girl (Kim Hyang-gi), to testify. Innocent Witness got screened during the…
20th Udine Far East Film Festival: Little Forest Review
Reflection, a slow pace of life… and life, dictated by the four seasons, are themes, rarely depicted in Korean cinema; instead, more viewers are attracted to the adrenaline-packed productions, full of well-known actors. But 2018 marked a change of tide – the leading female “auteur of Korean New Wave cinema” Yim Soon-rye adopted Little Forest, the two-volume…
Udine Far East Film Festival Reveals Its 20th Anniversary Edition Lineup
Today, a mere 9 days before the European audience finds its way to the little town in the Northeast Italy to explore the new and old jewels of Asian Cinema, Udine Far East Film Festival revealed its 2018 lineup. It was to be expected that the 20th anniversary edition of the festival would provide the…
Steel Rain Review
Netflix seems to have become every film goer’s Elysium; it has grown into a wholesome VOD platform, with country-specific contents, and has successfully moved even further as a global producer of TV shows and films. Even with some hit-and-miss productions, Netflix provides an easy access to a good selection of films from around the globe….
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