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The Asian Film Awards Academy (Afa Academy or Afaa) announced the nominations for the 18th Asian Film Awards (AFA18) and the Jury President for this year in Hong Kong today.

Thirty outstanding films from 25 countries and regions have been shortlisted to compete for 16 awards at AFA18, which celebrates artistic and technical achievements in Asian cinema. The prestigious lineup of nominees from around Asia includes seven Japanese films: Teki Cometh, Desert of Namibia (Yamanaka Yoko), All the Long Nights, My Sunshine, Happyend (Sora Neo), The Box Man (Ishii Gakuryu) and Black Ox.

Korean auteur Jang Jae-hyun’s Exhuma received eleven nominations, making it the most nominated film this year. It will compete for Best Film with Yoshida Daihachi’s Teki Cometh, Cannes Grand Prix-winning film All We Imagine as Light (Payal Kapadia), China’s Black Dog (Guan Hu), which was screened in the 37th TIFF Gala Selection, and Hong Kong’s...

South Korea’s Exhuma has topped the field, earning 11 nominations at the 18th Asian Film Awards, followed by Hong Kong’s Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In with nine nominations.

Hong Kong martial arts legend Sammo Hung will serve as the jury president for the awards, which feature a selection of 30 films from 25 countries and regions, competing across 16 categories. The awards ceremony will take place on March 16 in Hong Kong.

Directed by Jang Jae-hyun, Exhuma gained nominations for Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Newcomer, Best Screenplay, Best Original Music, Best Costume Design, Best Production Design, Best Visual Effects and Best Sound.

Adapted from the novel “City of Darkness” by Yuyi, Hong Kong action blockbuster Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In gained nine nominations, including Best Film, Best Supporting Actor, Best Editing, Best Cinematography, Best Original Music, Best Costume Design, Best Production Design, Best Visual Effects and Best Sound.

South Korean box office hit Exhuma and Hong Kong action blockbuster Twilight Of The Warriors: Walled In lead the nominations for the 18th Asian Film Awards, with a jury led by martial arts icon Sammo Hung.

Supernatural thriller Exhuma, directed by Jang Jae-hyun, leads the pack with 11 nods followed by Soi Cheang’s action thriller Twilight Of The Warriors: Walled In, which received nine nominations.

Scroll down for full list of nominations

Both titles were named in the best film category alongside Payal Kapadia’s Cannes Grand Prix winner All We Imagine As Light; Guan Hu’s Chinese drama Black Dog,...

The 18th Asian Film Awards, the region’s leading cinema honors, unveiled its 2025 nominations Friday, with South Korea’s horror hit Exhuma leading the pack with 11 nods. Directed by Jang Jae-hyun, the supernatural thriller melds feng shui and shamanistic traditions in a haunting narrative about an ominous grave. The movie was both a critical favorite and a huge theatrical sensation in South Korea, becoming the country’s highest-grossing film of the year. Alongside its best film nomination, the film earned recognition across several major categories, including best director, best actor for Choi Min-sik and best actress for Kim Go-eun.

The Asia Film Awards will return to Hong Kong on March 16 with a glitzy ceremony at the city’s Xiqu Centre in the West Kowloon Cultural District. This year’s lineup of honorees includes 30 films from 25 countries and regions, spanning 16 competitive categories.

The Hong Kong throwback action epic Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In,...

Martial arts legend Sammo Hung has been tapped as jury president for the 18th Asian Film Awards, while South Korean supernatural thriller “Exhuma” and Hong Kong action pic “Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In” dominate the nominations.

South Korean supernatural thriller “Exhuma,” helmed by director Jang Jae-hyun and marking the return of veteran actor Choi Min-sik, leads with 11 nods including best film, director, actor and actress. The film weaves elements of feng shui and traditional shamanism in its story of an ominous grave investigation.

Hong Kong action film “Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In” follows with nine nominations. Based on Yuyi’s “City of Darkness” novel and set in the 1980s Kowloon Walled City, the film is competing for best film, supporting actor and multiple technical awards.

Soi Cheang’s Hong Kong action film “Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In” follows with nine nominations. Based on Yuyi’s “City of Darkness...

Lou Ye’s Wuhan-set Covid drama An Unfinished Film took top honours at the 61st Golden Horse Awards, winning both best film and best director, while fellow mainland Chinese director Geng Jun’s LGBTQ+ black comedy Bel Ami won a hat-trick of prizes including best actor.

John Hsu’s Taiwanese supernatural comedy Dead Talents Society snatched the most prizes, walking away with five awards mostly in the technical categories.

Scroll down for full list of winners

The best narrative feature award for An Unfinished Film was presented by Golden Horse Awards chairman, renowned DoP Mark Lee Ping-bing and Hong Kong New Wave director Patrick Tam.

Huang Xi’s second full-length film, “Daughter’s Daughter,” is a deep look at how complicated motherhood can be. It premiered to great reviews at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. This deeply introspective film explores the complex emotional landscapes of three generations of women, creating a narrative that goes beyond typical family drama.

At the story’s center is Jin Aixia, a sixty-four-year-old Taiwanese divorcee played brilliantly by veteran actor Sylvia Chang. Her life turns into a maze of unexpected problems. When Jin lives in Taipei, her world is centered on her dementia-stricken mother and her daughter Fan Zuer, who is trying IVF treatment in New York with her boyfriend Jaiyi.

Sad events happen, and Zuer and Jaiyi die in a car accident. Jin is then put in an unimaginable situation: she is made the formal guardian of Zuer’s frozen embryo. This event turns into a furnace that makes her face her past,...

As the biggest festival in one of the world’s biggest film markets, the Tokyo International Film Festival has always been held under the glare of painfully high expectations. But taking place towards the end of Asia’s crowded autumn festival season, then struggling through the brutal years of the pandemic, it hasn’t been easy for the event to create a global footprint.

Ando Hiroyasu, who came on board as chairman in 2019, was determined to change all that and started to restructure the festival during the pandemic. In 2021, Shozo Ichiyama, a veteran producer (Caught By the Tides) and former Tokyo Filmex director, joined TIFF as Programming Director and helped to reorganize and streamline the program. Under Ando’s management, the festival also moved from Roppongi to the Ginza-Hibiya district, which has more cinemas, leisure and cultural venues, and introduced a series of high-profile filmmaker talks, known as the TIFF Lounge Talk Sessions.

The nominations for the 61st Golden Horse Awards were announced last week. Considered the “Chinese-language Oscars,” the awards showcase films made in Mandarin, Cantonese, or other Chinese dialects. This year’s nominations included a diverse range of movies from Taiwan, Hong Kong, mainland China, and Singapore.

John Hsu’s supernatural comedy “Dead Talents Society” topped the nominations with eleven total nods. The film tells the story of ghosts competing to haunt humans in an imagined afterlife. It received nominations for Best Feature Film, Best Director for John Hsu, and Best Original Screenplay. “Dead Talents Society” has already won audience awards at festivals like Toronto International Film Festival, where it was the runner-up in the Midnight Madness category.

Two other films, Tom Lin’s “Yen And Ai-Lee” and Geng Jun’s “Bel Ami,” followed closely behind with eight nominations each. These movies, along with Ray Yeung’s “All Shall Be Well...

John Hsu’s Taiwanese supernatural comedy Dead Talents Society has scored 11 nominations for the 61st Golden Horse Awards, followed by Tom Lin’s Yen And Ai-Lee and Geng Jun’s Bel Ami, with eight nods each.

Dead Talents Society and Bel Ami are among the five films competing in the best film category, along with Ray Yeung’s All Shall Be Well, Yeo Siew Hua’s Stranger Eyes and Lou Ye’s An Unfinished Film. The same five films are also running in the best director category.

They reflect the overall representation at this year’s Golden Horse Awards, with the participation of Hong Kong,...

John Hsu’s horror comedy Dead Talents Society heads the race for this year’s Golden Horse Awards with 11 nominations, including Best Narrative Feature, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actress for Sandrine Pinna.

The film, set in a fictional underworld where ghosts can linger in the mortal realm by competing to haunt humans, is produced by Taiwan’s Activator Co, Sony Pictures International Productions and several other local companies.

It was followed in the awards race by Tom Lin’s Yen And Ai-Lee and Geng Jun’s Bel Ami, which both received eight nominations.

Dead Talents Society and Bel Ami are both nominated for Best Narrative Feature, along with Ray Yeung’s All Shall Be Well, Yeo Siew-hua’s Stranger Eyes and Lou Ye’s An Unfinished Film. All five of these films are also nominated for Best Director.

Best Leading Actor nominations include King Jieh-wen (A...

Comedy-horror “Dead Talents Society” picked up 11 nominations for the Golden Horse Film Awards, making it the most acclaimed title among the 169 films in contention for the prestigious Chinese-language prizes.

“Yen and Ai-Lee” and “Bel Ami” both received eight nominations, putting them in a tie for second place. Recent Venice competition film “Stranger Eyes,” from Singapore’s Yeo Siew Hua received six.

Five films compete for the best narrative features award: John Hsu’s “Dead Talents Society,” Ray Yeung’s “All Shall Be Well,” Lou Ye’s “An Unfinished Film,” Geng Jun’s “Bel Ami” and “Stranger Eyes.” The same five also contest the best director award.

Nominees for best leading actor are: King Jieh-wen (“A Journey in Spring”), Chang Chen (“The Embers”), Yau Hawk-sau (“The Way We Talk”), Wanlop Rungkumjad (“Mongrel”) and Zhang Zhiyong (“Bel Ami”). Chang is a previous winner in the category.

Nominees for best actress are: Patra Au Ga-man...

The 37th Tokyo International Film Festival, taking place from October 28 to November 6, has announced a lineup opening with Shiraishi Kazuya’s 11 Rebels and closing with Christophe Honoré’s Marcello Mio, in-between featuring new Asian directors, an animation sidebar, restored Japanese classics, and Akira Kurosawa’s favorite films (among them Breathless and Hou Hsiao-hsien’s A Time to Live and a Time to Die). Complementing these will be masterclasses from Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Sammo Hung, as well as a Béla Tarr-led symposium. I’ll be traveling there from October 28 to November 2, with coverage to follow.

The main competition’s jury is spearheaded by Tony Leung and features Johnnie To, Chiara Mastroianni, Ildikó Enyedi, and Ai Hashimoto, while the 15-film lineup comprises an eclectic mix: nine world premieres of predominantly Asian titles, five Asian premieres, one international debut, and only a handful of European features among them.

See the competition lineup below...

The Tokyo International Film Festival revealed its full 2024 lineup on Wednesday, including its main competition program and the Asian Future section for emerging regional filmmakers, as well as the all-new Women’s Empowerment section, which highlights nine films directed by women or involving female-focussed stories.

Tokyo’s 15-title main competition reveals a preference for securing world premieres over previously shown titles by established festival names. There are eight world premieres in the section — including Big World and My Friend An Delie by China’s Yang Lina and Dong Zijian, respectively; Papa from Hong Kong’s Philip Yung; The Englishman’s Papers from Portugal’s Sergio Graciano; and three Japanese features, among others (see full lineup below). Additional highlights include the international premiere of Midi Z’s The Unseen Sister and Huang Xi’s recent Toronto Film Festival entry Daughter’s Daughter, starring Sylvia Chang.

As previously announced, the competition titles will...

Tokyo International Film Festival has announced its full line-up including its main international and Asian Future competitions, as well as the nine films selected for its Women’s Empowerment Section.

The new female-focused section will screen Iranian drama My Favourite Cake, directed by Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha, who are banned from travelling by the Iranian authorities and were unable to attend the film’s premiere in Berlin.

Other titles in the Women’s Empowerment Section include Turkish director Ceylan Ozgun Ozcelik’s In Ten Seconds; Hong Kong filmmaker Oliver Chan’s Montages Of A Motherhood; Memories Of A Burning Body, from Costa Rica’s Antonella Sudasassi Furniss; and the world premiere of Japanese director Naoki Tamura’s Doctor-x The Movie, among other titles.

Co-hosted with Tokyo Metropolitan Government, the Women’s Empowerment Section is programmed by Andrijana Cvetkovikj and focuses on films directed by female filmmakers and/or with female-focused narratives.

The Tokyo International Film Festival has unveiled a competition section with as many Chinese titles as Japanese for its 37th edition.

Announced on Wednesday the festival’s full lineup runs to a compact 110 films, culled from a huge 2,023 applications, and functions partly as discovery event, partly as a Japanese showcase and also as best-of the year international art house compendium.

The 15-title competition includes Midi Z’s “The Unseen Sister,” “Big World,” by Yang Lina and “My Friend An Delie,” by Dong Zijian from China. Adding rising star Hong Kong director Philip Yung’s “Papa” and Huang Xi’s Sylvia Chang-starring “Daughter’s Daughter,” fresh from Toronto, and the competition will resound to Chinese accents. From Japan comes “She taught Me Serendipity,” by Ohku Akiko, “Teki Cometh,” by Yoshida Daihachi and “Lust in the Rain,” which is a Japan-Taiwan coproduction directed by Katayama Shinzo.

Other competition selections include “The Englishman’s Papers,...

This year, Toronto International Film Festival was back. TIFF typically kicks off the North American fall festival season alongside Telluride, but it has had a rocky past couple of years. The pandemic in 2020 put a temporary pause on in-person festivities, and 2021-2022 featured a tentative rollout of hybrid festivities. Though 2023 committed to total in-person attendance, the SAG-AFTRA strikes of 2023 limited the amount of American celebrity presence on the red carpet; festival buzz too had been similarly muted. This year’s edition, however, witnessed the famed festival in full swing. With 278 films in this year’s programming, the 2024 edition of TIFF was jam-packed with Berlin/Cannes favorites, Awards season’s to-be-darlings, and of course, a good chunk of independent cinema.

Among the Asian cinema contenders, Korean and Taiwanese cinema have held an especially strong presence this year. There were nine Korean and Korean-adjacent entries – almost 100% more than in 2022, when there were...

Huang Xi’s Daughter’s Daughter is, as the title suggests, a generational drama, but one that encompasses four generations of women rather than just two. In fact, the central story is almost exclusively centered on women; male characters are largely referred to only passively, vaguely in conversation. It’s a choice that allows the film to touch on the varied dynamics of mothering, independence, and difficult choices in the lives of the very young and old women of this Taiwanese family. It also allows for women to critique women, mothers to critique daughters, and vice-versa without the typically ubiquitous presence of men in these scenarios. It almost plays like a contained thought experiment running underneath a classic dilemma about what to do with an unborn child.

The central figure Jin Aixia, is at once steadfast in her independence but quickly flustered at almost the slightest disruption and presence of...

From Italy to Canada and Colorado, the fall festivals unleashed a firehose of new films on the international landscape — the majority of which, as is ever thus, are still looking for buyers.

The Venice, Toronto, and Telluride film festivals all hosted plenty of splashy world premieres that attracted early or quick-to-respond buyers, like A24 with “Queer,” “The Brutalist,” and “Friendship,” TIFF opener “Nutcrackers” (Hulu), “Maria” (Netflix), and “September 5” (Paramount). But there are smaller films — and even some bigger, starrier ones from Naomi Watts in “The Friend” to Jude Law and Ana de Armas in “Eden” — still on the hook for stateside distribution.

While there are still plenty of industry-friendly festivals ahead to help locate buyers, like NYFF and AFI Fest, IndieWire rounds up the best films we saw at the fall fests so far that deserve distribution. Somebody, do something about these 22 titles!

Anne Thompson contributed to this story.

“April...

This year’s Toronto International Film Festival comes to a close, with Zhao Tao (who starred in Jia Zhang-ke’s “Caught by the Tides”) and Malala-produced haenyo documentary “The Last of the Sea Women” recognized. Notably, Taiwanese cinema also fared very well this year. The two Taiwanese films at the fest have been strong runner-ups for awards — including John Hsu’s supernatural comedy “Dead Talents Society” for the People’s Choice Midnight Madness Award and Sylvia Chang for “Daughter’s Daughter.”

But without further ado, here are the rest of the awards:

“Dead Talents Society” by John Hsu

People’s Choice Midnight Madness Award presented by Rogers is: The Substance, dir. Coralie Fargeat | United Kingdom/USA/France

The first runner-up is: Dead Talents Society, dir. John Hsu | Taiwan

The second runner-up is: Friendship, dir. Andrew DeYoung | USA

People’s Choice Documentary Award presented by Rogers is: The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal,...

The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival concluded on September 15th. In an unexpected outcome, the Stephen King adaptation “The Life of Chuck” won the People’s Choice Award. The award is the event’s most prestigious honor and selected by audience voting.

Directed by Mike Flanagan, “The Life of Chuck” tells the story of Charles Krantz in three chapters. Based on King’s novella, the film focuses on life, death, and finding meaning. Critic Chase Hutchinson praised the movie as a celebration of life’s meaningful moments.

Entering without a distributor, “The Life of Chuck” was not seen as a major contender. Its win provides a significant boost. Past People’s Choice Award winners have received Best Picture Oscar nominations 12 years in a row. Films like “Emilia Perez” and “Anora,” named runner-ups, had earned praise at Cannes but not the top TIFF prize.

In other categories, “The Substance” won for Midnight Madness.

“The Life of Chuck,” director Mike Flanagan’s Stephen King adaptation starring Tom Hiddleston, has won the People’s Choice Award at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival, TIFF organizers announced at an awards ceremony on Sunday.

In TheWrap’s review of the film, Chase Hutchinson called it “less of a horror film than it is an existential grappling with the end — while also being a jubilant celebration of the moments that make life worth living along the way. It’s Flanagan’s vibrant equivalent of Charlie Kaufman’s ‘Synecdoche, New York’ that finds hope and meaning in his own way just as it is one of the best modern Stephen King adaptations one could hope for.”

Unlike festivals like Cannes, Berlin, Sundance and Venice, Toronto does not give out a jury award to the festival’s top film. Instead, viewers at all public screenings are invited to vote for their...

This year, the Lightbox section of Toronto International Film Festival is hosting the world premiere of the sophomore feature film directed by Xi Huang, “Daughter’s Daughter”. The director’s debut “Missing Johnny” (2017) had a healthy and fruitful festival tour, but mainly on the Asian continent and at festivals specialized in Asian cinema. The new effort is more likely to travel further and longer, while the name of the legendary Taiwanese New Wave filmmaker Hou Hsiao-Hsien as the executive producer on ending credits suggests that Xi might be the new, internationally recognized voice of the Taiwanese cinema.

Daughter’s Daughter is screening at Toronto International Film Festival

The protagonist of the film is Jin Ai-xia (the one and only Sylvia Chang), a woman who spent a part of her life in New York and the other part in Taipei. From the two “episodes”, she has two daughters, Emma (Karena Lam) who lives...

Reuniting with screen legend Sylvia Chang after HBO Asia series “Twisted Strings”, writer-director Huang Xi (“Missing Johnny”) levels up with her deeply moving second feature, “Daughter’s Daughter”. Executive-produced by Chang and Hou Hsiao-hsien, the film elegantly explores the blurred lines between selflessness and selfishness, through a tale of modern motherhood that poses complex questions of responsibility when faced with sorrow: who is a mother, especially one who has often questioned her own parenting, to decide what to do with her deceased daughter’s unborn child?

Following a dialogue-free opening with Sylvia Chang on the border of New Jersey, the story starts with a prologue in winter 2018. At a Taipei hospital, Chang’s character Jin Aixia (or “Ai” as she’s called sometimes) is waiting in a hospital corridor while a leak in her room is being resolved. Breaking her leg in an accident, she’s potentially going to need surgery.

Taiwan-based Andrews Film has picked up international sales rights to drama film “Daughter’s Daughter” ahead of its premiere in the Platform section of the Toronto International Film Festival.

Directed by Huang Xi (“Missing Johnny”), the film has an impeccable pedigree flowing from its executive producers Hou Hsiao-hsien and Sylvia Chang. Taiwan industry icon, Chang also stars in the picture, alongside Karena Lam and Eugenie Liu (“Old Fox”).

The film chronicles the journey and the choices made by a 60-year-old woman whose daughter dies in an accident. The older woman discovers that she is responsible for her dead daughter’s IVF embryo and decides to confront the other daughter she had as a teenager. While past regrets and future responsibilities collide, the film also probes the complexities of reproduction among the LGBT community.

The film is produced by Sun Lok Productions and received project investment from Taicca on behalf of National Development Fund.