Cinemas of Asia

South Korea

Joonho Park’s fascinating, deeply poignant film tells the story of a gay North Korean defector adjusting to life in Seoul. The writer-director walks a fine line: his film is humane enough to avoid cynicism and honest enough to reject false uplift.

USA/France/Taiwan/China

This dreamy, serene film documents Youbin Gong, an adolescent boy living in Sangzhi County. Director Deming Chen shines a light on Gong’s family and his beautiful natural surroundings, which are imbued with hints of the mystical.

China

Wistful in tone and graceful in its direction, Zhuo Bian’s film stars Li Zhenping as Xie Shuwen, an elderly widower trying to find a measure of peace in his final years. While not without its sad moments, this is undoubtedly a life-affirming work.

India

Following Ramya from her teenage years into adulthood, Bad Girl is a deeply personal and widely resonant coming-of-age comedy. Varsha Bharath’s debut feature celebrates the chaos, complexity, and courage of growing up — and growing into oneself.

Iran

The discovery of a dead body during a mountain expedition unravels a 15-year-old murder mystery linked to the victim’s friend. This sharply scripted arthouse procedural marks a sophisticated spin on the endlessly popular true crime trope.

Japan

Yuiga Danzuka’s poetic film tells the story of a fractured family in contemporary Tokyo. The city’s concrete overpasses, bright lights, and sterile architecture are central figures in a landscape that embodies its characters’ estrangement.

India

Suhel Banerjee’s documentary blends realism and reconstruction to tell the story of migrant worker Mahesh, who cycled 1,700 kilometres to return home during the COVID lockdown. A poignant look at one of India’s most significant social issues: migration.

South Korea

Kim Ilrhan’s doc explores the lives of two trans women. Alice is a lighting director who dreams of becoming a dancer; Edhi is a counsellor preparing for gender-affirming surgery. The film is notable for its honesty and its wealth of detail.

India

A young man leads a solitary existence, living and working in a landfill zone on an island just outside of Taipei. His world shifts when, one day, a mysterious, almost feral young woman floats into his life.

China

Shot inside a Lenovo factory in Wuhan, Factory is a chilling study of life under global capitalism. Hao Zhou captures a world of control, exhaustion, and quiet revolt. where employees work under surveillance and time itself becomes a mechanism of power.

Canada/Hong Kong

Timothy Yeung’s film tells the story of four Hong Kong immigrants living in Scarborough, Ontario. With exceptional performances from its four leads, the film explores the Asian diaspora, social malaise, and the hardships of life under late capitalism.

Canada/Iran

Hemela is a tender documentary celebrating resilience and cultural memory in a diasporic community. Through food, laughter, and tradition, Pirouz Nemati crafts a luminous portrait of a woman whose everyday life radiates extraordinary warmth and joy.

India

Set against the fragile landscape of Kanjirappally, Hidden Tremors explores a family’s quiet struggle amidst climate-induced displacement. The film captures the fragile balance between people and ecosystem — and the emotional dislocation that follows.

Thailand

This haunting, meditative drama refracts global anxieties through the story of a white-collar worker and the pregnancy she’s concealing from her macho husband. Deeply conflicted about her pregnancy, a twist of fate exposes the truth…

India

I Am Revathi offers a deeply personal and intimate glimpse into the life of A. Revathi — trans woman, writer, activist, and theatre artist — amidst the struggles, power, and ongoing fight for dignity and inclusion faced by transgender people in India.

Japan

Adopted by a Kabuki actor, teenaged Kikuo dedicates himself to the art form and finds a close friend and fierce rival in Shunsuke, the actor’s other son. Over the course of five decades, Kikuo and Shunsuke ascend to Japan’s grandest stages.

Taiwan/France

Cheng-Chui Kuo’s drama is a lively, bittersweet ode to love and friendship. Following four friends through a night of drinking, reminiscence, and revelation, the film explores love and its discontents while paying tribute to Taipei.

China

Huo Meng’s film folds a grand historical reckoning into the story of one rural family in 1990s China. Visually rich and finely detailed in its human portraiture, this is a moving, elegiac work.

Myanmar/South Korea/Singapore/
France/Norway/Qatar

This bracing political drama tells the story of female sweatshop workers in Myanmar and their courageous struggle for justice. It’s a dark, unflinching work, in which the depiction of oppression is meant to spark outrage and action.

India/USA

In a cramped police station in India, an all-woman unit attempts to mediate fractured marriages with warmth, pressure, and limited power. Marriage Cops reveals the fragile, improvised systems women build to survive where the law and tradition fall short.

China/France

Blending sci-fi and family drama, My Father’s Son takes us through the past, present, and future of a computer engineer. As a child, Qiao is bullied by his father; in the present, his father is laid to rest; and in the future, he’s resurrected via AI.

South Korea

Insurance investigator Yoo-na is working a case of death by drowning; her company claims suicide, but the truth is unclear. Confronting an eccentric beneficiary with great powers of persuasion, Yoo-na finds herself in a fog of doubt and suspicion.

South Korea

Adapting Donald E. Westlake’s novel of ruthless corporate head-hunting The Ax, virtuoso filmmaker Park Chan-wook whips up his trademark blend of high style, suspense, and satire, in keeping with his classics Oldboy, The Handmaiden, and Decision to Leave.

Japan

A poetic tribute to the artistic innovations of Japanese architect Kengo Kuma. particle dance captures the humility and beauty of Kuma’s balancing act between tradition and experimentation, as he seeks to reconnect humans with their natural environment.

Japan/France/Singapore/
Philippines/Indonesia/Qatar

A beguiling, bravely personal portrait of childhood featuring a superb lead performance by Yui Suzuki. As the 11-year-old Fuki, she faces down the adult world with a mixture of calm, curiosity, and courage.

USA/Japan

In his first lead role since The Whale, Brendan Fraser plays a lonely American actor in Tokyo who lands a gig at a “rental family” agency, offering stand-ins for real world situations. Need a pretend boyfriend or funeral mourner? Brendan’s your man.

China/France

In this broken-mirror reality, humanity has lost its ability to dream. A Fantasmer proves a puckish outlier, slipping into the dreamworld and being reincarnated over the course of a century, each time from within a different film genre.

Japan

Keiko Tsuruoka’s film tells the story of an actor returning home to confess a sad secret. Filling the roles of writer, director, cinematographer, and editor, she has created a graceful work about the small moments that make up so much of our lives.

South Korea

This sleek, polished, jet-black comedy-thriller tells the story of Jae-in, an aspiring actress who gets in a sticky situation with her boyfriend, only to discover a soap company with a side service cleaning up bigger-than-average messes.

India/Italy/Sri Lanka

Set in a remote Himalayan town in India during the Kargil War, Secrets of a Mountain Serpent weaves together personal desire and ancient folklore to ask a pertinent question: Can you belong to someone and still belong to yourself?

Vietnam/Singapore/Japan

Ash Mayfair’s romance gives us San (Trân Quân), a trans woman saving up for gender-affirming surgery, and Nam (Võ Diên Gia Huy), her macho lover. They fight for their freedom and dignity against a society in which the odds are stacked against them.

South Korea

In this darkly compelling drama, an orphaned tennis player is forced to be as competitive at home as she is on the court. Chosen to be the live-in trainer of a wealthy girl, teenage Young-sun soon finds herself caught up in deceit and manipulation.

Hong Kong/UK

This razor-sharp drama mixes three characters, a secret from their past, and one small apartment into an explosive concoction. Tape is provocative in its #MeToo politics and stirs the heart with its depiction of personal pain.

Armenia

Set in the remote plains of rural Armenia, Maria Rigel’s sharp sophomore feature takes us into the lives of young Hayk, his aunt Narine, and Hayk’s rebellious mother, who has returned from a long stay in the country, throwing things off balance.

Thailand/France/Singapore/Germany

Wacky, whimsical, and always engaging, this tale about Thailand’s bloody modern history starts with a ghost in a vacuum cleaner and ends with a guerilla attack on an orgy. In between there’s romance, deadpan comedy, and subversive historical excavation.

South Korea

VIFF mainstay Hong Sangsoo returns with another winner: a symmetrically designed, deceptively casual delight. An extended, drunken encounter between a poet and his girlfriend’s family progresses toward revelation — with many amusing stops along the way.

South Korea

Da-bin has a broke mother, a runaway brother, and a sister who’s going deaf, but gets by thanks to his best friend and caring girlfriend. Poignant and poetic, this is a film that explores the pain of adolescence and the stress of competing loyalties.

South Korea

Two sisters face each other down over the course of this tense, mysterious psychological thriller. Hayoung is trainer of violent rescue dogs; Sora is fresh out of prison. Their reacquaintance will lead to a violent, cathartic climax.

Sri Lanka/USA

Rajee Samarasinghe’s poetic debut, Your Touch Makes Others Invisible, blends allegory and testimony from Tamil women in war-torn Sri Lanka. Filmed secretly under military rule, it’s a haunting meditation on grief, survival, and the refusal to forget.