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Asian cinemai

Views, news, and reviews of films from the continent's biggest movie production centres.

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The film Shang-Chi, starring Simu Liu, Awkwafina and Tony Leung, showcases how Asian filmmakers and actors are moving ever further away from racist stereotypes. The cultural diversity now visible on screen is the result of larger demographic trends that the US far right cannot hold back even if it tried.

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  • This year’s Udine Far East Film Festival, in Italy, in collaboration with the Korean Film Archive, is showing 7 films made in Korea during the turbulent 1950s
  • The programme aims to introduce the world to Korean films beyond Oldboy and My Sassy Girl. A YouTube channel shows the movies for those who can’t make the event
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A migrant from China to Hong Kong (Raymond Lam) winds up in the Kowloon Walled City, where he befriends mobsters, in Soi Cheang’s lavishly funded yet edgy film, a spectacle let down by its storytelling.

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Starring Patra Au, Tai Bo and Leung Chung-hang, director Ray Yeung’s LGBTQ drama All Shall Be Well sees an elderly Hong Kong lesbian at risk of losing everything after her partner suddenly dies.

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In her first feature-length documentary, New York-based Zhao Yehui captures the story of four generations of her family, set against a backdrop of hardship high in the mountains of Shanxi province.

Hold You Tight and Lan Yu were daring films for their time. The first stars Chingmy Yau, then an actress in adults-only films, as a bored wife who has an affair, while the latter is a stylish gay drama.

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Donna Ong’s documentary examines cinema and Hong Kong history from the 1950s onwards through the eyes of a titan of the cultural scene. Fascinating and packed with archive material, it is narrated by Law.

A look at Ekin Cheng’s journey from actor and Cantopop star to husband to actress Yoyo Mung – and the public romances that made him a tabloid magnet and drew public criticism.

Director Sam Wong has tried to pack too much into Suspect, and the result is an incoherent mess. Playing a detective with unusual powers, Nick Cheung endures some frankly stupid set pieces.

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Golden Horse Awards winner Old Fox depicts Taiwan after the end of martial law, a time of rapid change. Director Hsiao Ya-chuan hopes its message resonates today as it did in the era in which it is set.

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In 1998, Rush Hour shot Jackie Chan to international fame. But after making the film with Chris Tucker, Chan ultimately decided not to abandon Hong Kong, and continued to make films in both places.

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As two Hong Kong films premiere at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, we look back at the city’s cinema history at the event, including Wong Kar-wai’s many hits and Johnnie To’s successes in the 2000s.

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Singaporean director and writer Yeo Siew Hua talks about addressing the age of surveillance in his new film Stranger Eyes, Chinese philosophy, and why he is on the lookout for collaborations.

Christopher Nolan references and a love triangle don’t save Chinese drama Galaxy Writer, which follows two fledgling filmmakers navigating China’s commercialised movie industry.

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Flower Drum Song (1961), the first Hollywood film with a mostly Asian cast, was a rare box-office dud for Rodgers and Hammerstein. Was it a coincidence? We look back at the groundbreaking musical.

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Kim Sung-su’s political blockbuster faithfully recounts the 1979 coup d’état that plunged South Korea into its darkest period to date, in a film full of grandstanding machismo and intimidation.

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Thrilling HBO Vietnam war drama, directed by The Handmaiden’s Park Chan-wook, stars Robert Downey Jnr as various characters and Hao Xuande as a Viet Cong spy working for the chief of the secret police.

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The same five titles dominate the nominations in all major categories of the Hong Kong Film Awards 2024. Post film editor Edmund Lee predicts the winners and reflects on who or what actually should win.

Iranian-French actress Zar Amir Ebrahimi, who won best actress at Cannes 2022 for Holy Spider, talks about her films that portray people defying Iran’s strict laws, and advocating for women’s rights.

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Journalist Shiori Ito’s documentary Black Box Diaries is a soul-baring examination of her sexual assault by a high-profile journalist and her fight for justice that pushed the #MeToo movement in Japan.

Writer and director Sasha Chuk stars in her debut film Fly Me to the Moon, which follows a young immigrant from mainland China as she struggles to live life in Hong Kong.

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Filipino director Mikhail Red talks about Friendly Fire, his upcoming esports movie, why he loves making horror films, and how it is hard to survive as a filmmaker in the Philippines.

Oldboy’s Choi Min-sik stars as a paranormal investigator who, with shaman Hwa-rim (played by Kim Go-eun) and others, performs a ritual cleansing on the grave of a property tycoon’s ancestor.

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