The Roundup: Punishment, which premiered at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival, sees Korean hard man Ma Dong-seok return as a no-nonsense cop who punches his way through a gang of internet scammers.
Above the Dust follows a 10-year-old boy in China who dreams of owning a water pistol, and who goes on a journey through his grandfather’s memories of the 1950s and his terrible misdeeds at the time.
Debuting at Berlin 2024, Black Tea, the first film about Africans in China made by an African filmmaker, exhibits a tone-deaf understanding of what the diaspora’s experience is like in the country.
Director Qiu Yang’s Some Rain Must Fall centres on a well-off woman whose family fragments after an accident, in a critique on damaging dysfunctions present in the lives of China’s middle class.
Premiering at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival and starring Parasite’s Lee Sun-kyun and Along with the Gods’ Ju Ji-hoon, Project Silence is a clanging catastrophe that shows limited invention.
Premiering at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, The Breaking Ice stars Zhou Dongyu and Liu Haoran in Hong Kong-based Singaporean filmmaker Anthony Chen’s first foray into mainland China.
Wei Shujun’s adaptation of Yu Hua’s short story is a vividly shot whodunit that bucks the recent trend of disappointing Chinese neo-noir films and cements the director’s status as one of China’s best filmmakers.
Youth (Spring), by Chinese director Wang Bing, follows young factory workers in China as they toil, love and live their lives within the confines of workshops that offer them little pay.
Fan Bingbing makes an audacious comeback after nearly five years out of the limelight for tax evasion in Green Night. Thelma & Louise meets Blue is the Warmest Colour in a flashy but flawed film.
A film by A Girl at My Door director July Jung, Next Sohee condemns the exploitation and abandonment of young people in South Korea by employers, schools and the authorities alike.
Directed by Squid Game star Lee Jung-jae, this spy thriller, set during South Korea’s turbulent 1980s and ’90s, draws on real events, but ends up a confused mess.
A woman adopted from South Korea when she was a baby and raised in France discovers she cares a lot more about her roots than she realises after meeting her biological father in Seoul.
Director Chie Hayakawa’s harrowing look at Japan’s ageist social mores has done the country’s cinema proud as the only Japan-set film to feature at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival.
International film festivals in Berlin and Rotterdam are the latest to move screenings partly or fully online; it’s not all bad, but there’s no substitute for film fans and professionals meeting at in-person events, organisers say.
Audiovisual CUT Association took over programming of Cinematheque Passion in 2016 and transformed it into an innovative, dynamic space.
The Taiwan Film Institute’s efforts to restore classics are a much needed shot in the arm for the island’s local cultures.
Working around social distancing measures, online and physical events explored how a national trauma manifested on screen.
From Hollywood to China, the coronavirus is reshaping the film world, making a raft of pandemic-themed movies, be they comedy capers, action and adventure, or patriotic salutes to unsung heroes, almost inevitable.
A survey of when, or if, US film-goers will head back to cinemas highlights the lack of innovation and engagement in the Hong Kong film industry.
Straight-to-streaming blockbusters and free online art-house films may be pragmatic and generous during the coronavirus lockdown, but will the public expect this to continue after the pandemic has passed?
Constanze Ruhm’s version of ‘Anna’ gives a voice to the protagonist of the original documentary, and all women marginalised by the film industry.
Teboho Edkins’ Days of Cannibalism looks like a Western, but these frontier spaces are settled by Chinese ‘pioneers’.
René Viénet’s debut Can Dialetics Break Bricks? takes kung fu potboiler Crush and positions it as a confrontation between the state and revolutionaries .
Mainland directors are frequently bombarded with questions abroad about China’s social and political conditions. Now their Hong Kong counterparts must prepare for similar interrogations.
Films about sporting events and sports stars have frequently been used to stir national pride but certain filmmakers have pretty much ignored the brief to present a true picture.
The Legend of 1900, starring Tim Roth as a pianist who lives his entire life on a boat, has surged past the latest blockbusters in box office earnings and ratings.
A milestone Hong Kong-Japanese co-production – The Murders of Oiso – shows why the city’s independent directors should be seeking partnerships beyond the border.
We try to make sense of Roland Emmerich’s Midway getting approval for a general release in mainland Chinese cinemas while domestic war films such as The Eight Hundred remain in limbo.
Despite a tightening of China’s already strict film censorship, you can still find alternative fare, if you know where to look.
