Asian Film Awards 2019 nominations: Burning, Shoplifters vie for top prizes

South Korean film Burning and Japan’s Shoplifters lead the field with eight and six award nominations, respectively

Hong Kong films again absent from the best picture race, but Felix Chong’s Project Gutenberg is up for an impressive five awards

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From left: Yoo Ah-in, Jun Jong-seo and Steven Yeun in a still from Burning, which has been nominated for six awards in the 2019 Asian Film Awards.

Published: 3:32pm, 11 Jan 2019Updated: 11:50am, 14 Jan 2019

After becoming the first film from South Korea to be shortlisted in the Academy Awards’ best foreign-language film category, director Lee Chang-dong’s Burning is now leading the field in the 13th edition of the Asian Film Awards with nods in eight categories, including best picture and best director.

Lee’s film is a slow-burning drama that is loosely adapted from the short story Barn Burning by Haruki Murakami. It revolves around the shifting dynamics among a trio of characters, including a frustrated writer (Yoo Ah-in), his free-spirited crush (Jun Jong-seo) and a Gatsby-esque stranger that she has just befriended (Steven Yeun). Yoo and Jun are nominated in the best actor and best newcomer categories, respectively.

Joining Burning in the best picture race are Hirokazu Koreeda’s Sh oplifters, another best foreign-language Oscar contender and the Palme d’Or winner at last year’s Cannes Film Festival; the fact-based comedy-drama Dying to Survive, which won Xu Zheng the best actor prize at the Golden Horse Awards in November; Jinpa, a meditative drama produced by Wong Kar-wai and directed by Tibetan filmmaker Pema Tseden; and Sanju, a biographical film about the life of controversial Indian actor Sanjay Dutt.

Shoplifters and Sanju have garnered six nominations each. They are followed by the twisty crime thriller Projec t Guten berg, written and directed by Hong Kong veteran Felix Chong Man-keung, which is nominated for five awards.

Aaron Kwok in Project Gutenberg; the Hong Kong actor has been nominated for the best actor award.

While this is the fifth year in a row no Hong Kong film has earned a best pircture nomination at the Asian Film Awards, it is at least encouraging to see Chong’s film joined by five other Hong Kong films on the nomination list, including two that are directed by new filmmakers (Tracey and Still Human).

The winners of the 2019 Asian Film Awards will be announced at a ceremony at TVB City in Hong Kong on March 17.

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