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Hanoman Award

Hanoman Award is a feature-length competitive program for established directors and upcoming young talent who hold the future of Asian cinema. The first winner will be awarded a Golden Hanoman and runner-up will be awarded a Silver Hanoman.

Amanda Nell Eu, Gina S. Noer and Julien Rejl gave the Silver Hanoman to “Viet and Nam” by Vietnamese Truong Minh Quy and the Golden Hanoman to “HappyEnd” by Neo Sora.

Film Analysis: HappyEnd (2024) by Neo Sora Interview With Neo Sora: The Casting Process Was Classical and Quite Abnormal for Japan Film Review: Viet and Nam (2024) by Minh Quy Truong Netpac Award

Netpac Award aims to read the diverse Asian perspectives from the first or second work of directors who hold the future of Asian cinema.

Arian Darmawan, Intan Paramaditha and Latika Padgaonkar gave the Netpac Award to “Ma – Cry of Silence” by The Maw Naing

Film Review: Ma- Cry of Silence...

The SXSW Sydney festival has set a 75-film screening schedule for its first edition. The selection skews heavily towards music, but is also distinctly international.

Headline titles include re-edited Talking Heads concert film “Stop Making Sense,” “Hot Potato: The Story of The Wiggles,” an exploration of iconic Australian musical act The Wiggles; drill rap documentary “Onefour: Against All Odds,” directed by Gabriel Gasparinatos; and the widely-acclaimed “Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus,” directed by Neo Sora.

“The first ever SXSW Sydney Screen Festival aims to platform the most exciting new voices, new forms and new ways of creating on screen. We hope to inspire our audiences and industry, by unwrapping the future of screen innovation as it emerges,” said Ghita Loebenstein, the festival’s head of screen. “Like our Austin counterparts, our festival presents global programming from leading creators, and our unique offer is this distinctive Asia Pacific lens. We also thematically lean...

The South Australian festival iis now an annual event.

Films from Europe, the Middle East and Australia dominate the fiction and documentary competitions at the Adelaide Film Festival (Aff), the first since an injection of government funding enabled the event to step up from being biennial to annual.

The festival will take place in Adelaide, the capital of South Australia, from October 18-29.

The opening film will be the Australian premiere of Kitty Green’s Toronto premiere and awards hopeful The Royal Hotel, produced by UK-Australian outfit See-Saw Films. The world premiere of Scott Hicks’ music documentary My Name’s Ben Folds – I Play Piano,...

Stars Acting Up At Busan

Oscar-winning Korean actor Youn Yuh-jung will headline the Actors’ House section of the upcoming Busan International Film Festival, it was announced on Thursday.

Introduced in 2021, Actors’ House is a special series that connects audiences and film enthusiasts with iconic actors from the current generation through its in-depth discussions. “There’s much anticipation to hear her words of wisdom, as she’s known for her insightful observations,” said the festival.

Others this year include: Han Hyo-joo, Song Joong-ki and Korean-American actor and author John Cho. Han is known for performances in 2015’s “The Beauty Inside,” “W” (2016), “Happiness (2021), and last year’s “The Pirates: The Last Royal Treasure.” She will be in Busan with Netflix-backed “Believer 2” and recently appeared in the Disney+ original series, “Moving.”

Song, who hosted the 2021 Busan festival’s opening ceremony, was recently seen in “Hopeless,” one of the handful of Korean films in Cannes this year.

Osaka Asian Film Festival (Oaff) 2023, which began on March 10, has finished its 10-day screening run on Sunday March 19 with the World Premiere of “Side by Side”, a magical-realist mystery drama, the second film as director from prolific screenwriter Ito Chihiro. The screening at Osaka came ahead of its nationwide release on April 14.

Before it was screened, the award ceremony was held and the results for each of the categories were announced.

The results of each award are below, beginning with the Grand Prix for films in the Competition section.

Osaka Asian Film Festival 2023 Award Winners ★ Grand Prix (Best Picture Award)

This award is given to the best film among the Competition films, as selected by the jury. The winner receives 500,000 yen. The Oaff 2023 Jury, comprised of directors Ho Cheuk Tin, Hsieh Pei-ju, and journalist Tsukinaga Rie, having viewed all 14 films in competition, decided as follows:

Winner | “Like & Share” | Indonesia...

“Like & Share” from Indonesia’s Gina S. Noer was named the best picture and collected the Grand Prix on Sunday at the Osaka Asian Film Festival.

“All of us on the jury were struck by the film’s clear and powerful message, which affirms young women’s sexual curiosity and desire while clearly saying no to sexual violence. The style of the film is also original. The sweet, poppy feeling that fascinates the audience in the first half of the film becomes darker as the story progresses, making us shudder. “Like & Share,” with its strong message and brilliant direction, is a film that needs to be seen now more than ever,” said the jury in a statement.

“This movie is talking about how we deal with trauma and how we deal with sexual violence. It’s not easy to tell and it’s not easy to make a movie about it,...

The turn Indonesian indie cinema seems to be making the last few years, towards social issues that torment the local society, mostly through the lives of youths, is one of the most interesting things happening in the industry at the moment, with movies like “Yuni” and “Photocopier” being among the most prominent samples. Award winning script writer turned director Gina S. Noer's movie also follows in the footsteps of the aforementioned.

Like & Share is screening at Osaka Asian Film Festival

Best friends Lisa and Sarah are two 17-year-olds living in Jakarta, who are trying to forge a career in the world of Asmr, by eating food in a way that is both artful and sensual. The more they deal with the world of YouTube however, the more they find themselves sucked in, with Lisa in particular, developing an obsession with porn that is soon revealed to be something completely different.

The wait is over: Intl. Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), set to kick off on Jan. 25, is returning for its first full on-site edition in three years.

“We are finally able to present the reshaped program as it was intended: in cinemas across Rotterdam. We find it incredibly encouraging to see that the number of accredited guests is similar to pre-covid editions,” says festival director Vanja Kaludjercic.

Alongside IFFR’s Tiger competition strand, which celebrates innovative and adventurous up-and-coming filmmakers, there are retrospectives of Judit Elek, Stanya Kahn, Arc and Japanese animator Yuasa Masaaki, as well as “Sunshine State,” Steve McQueen’s much-anticipated artwork, originally commissioned for the festival’s 50th anniversary back in 2021.

“It’s great to see that this extra time has allowed it to evolve into what it is today: a monumental two-channel video projection that will surely move all those who witness it,” she adds. “With this commission,...

“Two Blue Stripes” is the directorial debut of the Indonesian screenwriter and entrepreneur Ginatri S. Noer. A commercial success in its native country, this movie about an Indonesian teen couple’s pregnancy has won awards at the 2019 Bandung Film Festival and the 2019 Indonesian Film Festival.

“Two Blue Stripes” is Screening as Part of Asian Pop-up Cinema Season 12

Though the polar opposites, both economically and academically, Bima (Angga Yunanda) and Dara are a high school couple. One day, while fooling around alone in Dara’s house, one thing leads to another and Dara ends up pregnant. Shocked by what’s happened, Bima tries to run away and convince his girlfriend to have an abortion, but later realizesthe weight of his deed and decides to take responsibility and help Dara hide her pregnancy and finish school. Soon, the girl’s pregnancy is discovered and the couple has to bear the consequences of...