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As we have mentioned many times the past few years, it seems that the future of Asian cinema lies somewhere among the Asean countries, with the filmmakers from the particular region having both the inspiration and the command of the medium to present new things, both in terms of stories and cinematic approach. Malaysia in particular seems to have one of its greatest years in that regard, with the huge success of “Tiger Stripes” being the tip of the iceberg. Indonesian audience seems to have returned to cinemas even more massively than before the pandemic, the Filipino film industry is also experiencing a boom in the last few years, particularly in amount of titles, while the rest of the countries in the region are following close by, mostly through approaches that combine genre with art-house filmmaking.

Without further ado, here are 30 movies that highlighted all the aforementioned in 2023, in reverse order,...

Georgia Oakley’s Blue Jean is a film about life made unlivable due to the venomous prudishness of British culture. Set in Newcastle, in the north of England, in the late 1980s, the film follows twentysomething Jean (Rosy McEwen) as she juggles a double life: self-effacing physical education teacher by day and femme club-going lesbian by night.

Jean seems to be doing a good job of keeping these personas separate, even if it means that her silence feeds everyone’s presumptions of her heterosexuality. That is, until one of her students, Lois (Lucy Halliday), also a lesbian, starts showing up at the pub where Jean hangs out with her queer friends and butch, tatted-up punk-rock girlfriend, Viv (Kerrie Hayes), who, unlike Jean, is completely uninterested in passing for straight in order to accommodate homophobes.

As in Badrul Hisham Ismail’s recent Maryam, Blue Jean’s protagonist moves through the city in a tiny car.

Maryam (Sofia Jane) appears to lead a modern existence; she owns a successful art gallery and resides in a spacious, opulent apartment. She practically has almost any kind of freedom except choosing her own mate. In a country that strictly follows Sharia law, she still needs the approval of her father, her legal guardian (“wali”), to get married. It doesn’t seem to matter that Maryam is already 50 years old, she will receive plenty of mansplaining on her protracted quest to have her wedding approved. The fact that she comes from an aristocratic family and that her father is none other than the timber tycoon Tengku Dol further burdens her with the expectation that she will marry someone of equal standing, preferably a royalty and certainly not a much younger black man from Sierra Leone.

Maryam is screening at International Film Festival Rotterdam

Although we are not given the...

Amir Muhammad studied Law but devotes himself entirely to other activities, such as writing and filmmaking. Some of his films have been banned in Malaysia. A full retrospective of his work was screened at the Pesaro Film Festival in Italy in 2008. As a writer, Amir was very successful with his socially critical non-fictional work Malaysian Politicians Say the Darndest Things. The book proved to be a bestseller. Amir’s short film The Three is part of 15Malaysia (2009), an omnibus film that consists of 15 short films by 15 Malaysian filmmakers. Since 2007 he has been active as a publisher, which caused him to take a break from filmmaking. With Voyage to Terengganu (2016) he is back from his absence as a filmmaker.

Badrul Hisham Ismail (Malaysia) studied in New York, where he shot his short film A Tale of a Mannequin (2014) with the help of a Kickstarter campain. Together with Amir Muhammad, also from Malaysia,...

Filmmaker/writer Amir Muhammad decided, together with his locally raised colleague Badrul Hisham Ismail, to shoot a film in Terengganu. As a basis for their documentary, they used the book “Voyage to Kelantan” (1838) by Munshi Abdullah (1796-1854), who wrote it after visiting the area for one day.

Voyage to Terengganu screened on International Film Festival Rotterdam (Iffr)

Following Abdullah’s path through his writings, the documentary functions like a tour guide to the area, as the two men roam in the streets, taking in as many, different images possible. Furthermore, they talk to the locals, most of which seem to be occupied with fishing and small commerce. The locals talk about a number of subjects, including religion, pop arts, the local martial art called Silat and other subjects. However, as the documentary progresses, we learn that this society is governed by superstition, women are considered secondary citizens, and the slave trade is not forbidden.