Cinemas of Asia

Thailand/Singpore/France/
Norway/China/Hong

A middle-aged businessman leads his family on a one-day religious pilgrimage in the hopes of extending his sickly mother’s life. Along the way, conflict brews, painful realizations unfold, and the film transforms into a meditation of faith, love, and duty.

Hong Kong

This wry, twisty theatrical farce stars Stephen Fung as a playwright, actor, and director who writes a play based on his own past. His rich ex-lover wants to co-star, but our hero has found a sexy new actress, and he’s got a plan to get her the part…

Japan

A lonely proofreader’s isolated world begins to open through an unlikely friendship with a gentle physics teacher. Based on Mieko Kawakami’s acclaimed novel, this luminous drama is a delicate meditation on loneliness, intimacy ,and self-discovery.

Canada

A TIFF Docs world premiere and Cannes Docs award winner, Ba’s Book follows Vietnamese-Canadian filmmaker Ashley Duong as she brings her father’s memoir to Vietnam and recreates it with her family, blending documentary and staged scenes.

France/Bangladesh/Germany/
Norway/Portugal

The Difficult Bride follows Zaineen, a young woman preparing for her marriage. Through a blend of feminist social commentary, psychological horror, and surreal imagery, the film explores female desire, fear, and the weight of societal expectations.

France/Indonesia/UK

In the South Sulawesi province of Indonesia, Eka, one of the few remaining bissu — spiritual leaders who embody the aspects of all genders — struggles to reconcile their identity with community expectations and their own devout Muslim faith.

Nepal/Germany/Brazil/
France/Norway

In a remote Nepalese village, Pirati takes charge in the search for a missing girl belonging to her family of third-gender Kinnar women. A densely atmospheric thriller and a moving portrait of an embattled but resilient community.

India

Three interwoven stories explore survival, resilience, and the human cost of civil conflict against the ethnic violence that erupted in 2023 in Manipur, Northeast India. Yogesh Lohan offers an intimate portrait of lives caught in the strife.

Myanmar/Czech Republic/France

Achingly sensual and graced with fine performances, Fruit Gathering depicts embattled desire in a conservative society. Two working-class women fall into a romantic relationship in contemporary Myanmar — but is their love real, or borne of desperation?

China/France

In this tender, compassionate drama, we see the hardships endured by a young girl adopted in the early 1980s during China’s one-child policy. As a teenager in the 90s, she’s still fighting to find a sense of belonging and assert her worth.

Vietnam/Singapore/Norway/
France/Indonesia/Saudi Arabia/
Cambodia/Thailand/Taiwan

Bảo Lê makes a notable entrance with this lush, meticulously composed feature debut that unfolds as a series of film tableaux drawing on moments in the life of a middle-aged mechanic whose work involves installing decibel meters across public spaces.

Canada/Iran/
Turkey/Venezuela

A forgotten vinyl record from Venezuela becomes Sanaz Sohrabi’s guide through interlocking histories of oil, Iran, music, and political memory in An Incomplete Calendar.

Pakistan

Lali explores the turbulent union of Zeba and Sajawal, two wounded souls bound by fate, through a compelling visual language, rich symbolism, and emotional depth. A distinctive and significant work of contemporary Pakistani cinema.

China

Xu Zao’s mellow, melancholy film follows a bottom-tier employee at a decaying film studio as he gets pulled into an online obsession. Mixing animation with live action, this is a whimsical satire and a lament for the pre-digital world.

China

Kangdrun’s feature debut depicts a twentysomething filmmaker coming to grips with a shameful act she committed in childhood. Moving between past and present, with each main character played by two actors, this is a provocative and challenging work.

Japan

Schoolgirls Fujina and Kyomoto find success creating manga together, until one day a rift occurs… Taking us from triumph through tragedy and out the other side, Look Back has all the grace and tenderness director Kore-eda Hirokazu is famous for.

Japan/France/
Singapore/Philippines

This graceful, serene drama brings former sisters-in-law together in an exploration of art, sexuality, and psychology. There’s a complex backstory here, but not a hint of melodrama: writer-director Koji Fukada is a master of subtle revelation.

South Korea

VIFF mainstay Hong Sang-soo returns with the story of a daughter, her estranged mother, and the step-family she’s never met. Hong’s visual style is unadorned as ever — all the better to highlight the strangeness of human interaction.

South Korea

Lee Chang-dong’s first film since Burning (2018) is a sardonic, slow-burning satire about two couples: a documentary filmmaker married to a wealthy businessman, and a working-class family struggling to make ends meet after the husband has been laid off.

South Korea

This gentle, lyrical film stars Yang Hae-bom as San, an adorable toddler living in the countryside. Her life is peaceful save for the aggressive outbursts of her brother, whose autism has created tension between the parents…

Palestine/Belgium/Qatar

Revolutionaries Never Die is Mohanad Yaqubi’s reply to Jocelyne Saab, who passed away before the two could collaborate. Yaqubi’s film serves as equal parts tribute, conversation, and partnership with the revolutionary past.

Bangladesh

Roid follows Sadhu, a solitary man who marries a mysterious young woman from a distant village. But when her behaviour disrupts the quiet rhythm of Sadhu’s life, he decides to abandon her — only for her to reappear, again and again.

South Korea/USA

School for Defectors is an intimate and quietly uplifting documentary that follows a group of 20 teenagers, children of North Korean defectors, as they adjust to life and education at Jangdaehyun School in Busan, South Korea.

Singapore

Anthony Chen tells the soulful story of a father and son in contemporary Singapore, each of whom gets married for very different reasons. This is a film about the human cost of poverty — poignant, relatable, and profound.

Hong Kong/Netherlands/
South Korea/Sweden

Whispers in May follows Qihuo and her friends in China’s Liangshan Mountains as childhood gives way to womanhood. It blends close observation and scenes of the girls’ search with animated fragments of Yi oral myth to create a hypnotic coming-of-age film.