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Pema Tseden’s drama “Balloon” won the Grand Prize at Tokyo Filmex’s 20th edition, which unspooled Nov. 23-Dec. 1 at two locations in central Tokyo.

The film, which premiered in the Horizon’s section of this year’s Venice Film Festival, examines the sex lives and mores of rural folk in the director’s native Tibet. Tseden also won grand prizes at two previous editions of the Asian-focused Filmex.

Winner of the second-place Special Jury Prize was Chinese director Gu Xiaogang’s “Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains.” The director’s feature debut, it was also the closing film in the International Critics’ Week section at this year’s Cannes festival and has festival play in Singapore.

Special Mentions went to Cambodian director Neang Kavitch’s “Last Night I Saw You Smiling” and Nanako Hirose’s “book-paper-scissors,” while “Silent Rain” by Ryutaro Nakagawa scooped the audience award. Hirose and Nakagawa’s...

Aperture returns for its second edition, continuing our commitment to presenting some of the boldest, most daring and striking films from the Asian and Pacific regions to wide and diverse audiences across the UK. Aperture is the only UK film festival to cover the whole of the Asian region and also to explore Oceania.

The Festival will be hosting Singaporean filmmaker Daniel Hui in London for the first complete show of his full body of work to date, including the UK premiere of his latest film “Demons”. Aperture will also welcome Yih Wen Chen to the UK for the world premiere of her moving documentary “Eye on the Ball”, with audio-description, on the Malaysian blind youth football team.

10 Sep

One of Aperture’s new titles, “Last Night I Saw You Smiling” by Kavich Neang will be Open City Documentary Festival Closing Night Film.

Producer Daniel Mattes in London for the...

Midnight Family Photo: Luke Lorentzen This year’s Open City Documentary Festival will take place across London from September 4 to 10. Alice Riff’s Elections, a film on school elections in Sao Paulo, will open the six-day festival, while Kavich Neang’s Last Night I Saw You Smiling, explores the history of a long serving home for Cambodian artists that is now set for demolition.

Key British documentaries at the festival include Lucy Parker’s Solidarity, an investigation into workplace blacklists and Andrea Luka Zimmerman’s Here For Life, an observational documentary about the residents of a London commune.

Prolific Russian director Sergei Loznitsa will be present for a screening of his The Trial, a found footage documentary made from archival film of one of Joseph Stalin’s first show trials, shot in Moscow in 1930 where the trial is real but the crime is staged. Japanese filmmaker Naomi Kawase will also...