Spotlight on Japan
Young sales executive Kawamura leads a picture-perfect life. He’s handsome, well-liked, has a great job that he excels at, and is about to marry the CEO’s daughter. On his way…
Spotlight on China
1920s Tianjin, northern China. The son of a martial arts master and his most talented apprentice fight to take over a prominent martial arts academy. But rather than obey the…
Spotlight on Taiwan
Raised in a rural area, Feng (popular Taiwanese actress Jean Kao) defies her grandmother''s objections and runs away to Taipei to become a singer, only to be trafficked as a…
Asian|American
Seen through the eyes of a Korean American family that leaves the Bay Area for small-town Wyoming after experiencing devastating loss, A GREAT DIVIDE addresses the emotional and psychological impact…
Spotlight on Korea
Jae-wan (Sul Kyung-gu), a successful lawyer, takes on the case of a rich executive’s son, who has purposely run over and killed a man and left his daughter seriously injured.…
Documentaries, New American Perspectives
When the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art exhibits paintings by the acclaimed artist Nicky Nodjoumi shortly after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, religious hardliners ambush the work sparking a family journey…
Documentaries, Green Screen
ABOVE AND BELOW THE GROUND tells the story of Indigenous punk rock pastors in Myanmar who team up with women activists to protect a sacred river from a Chinese-built megadam.…
Asian|American, Documentaries
Alan Chong Lau is the epitome of the blue collar artist. Aside from working in produce at Seattle's iconic Asian supermarket Uwajimaya for three decades, Alan has been hard at…
Documentaries
Throughout cult film director Albert Pyun''s incredible 40-year career, his bizarre, fantastical films were often criticized and parodied but even now the incredible worlds he brought to life continue to…
Kau Ka Hōkū Award Nominee, Spotlight on China
Wen Shan (Chinese superstar Hu Ge from THE WILD GOOSE LAKE) is a mediocre screenwriter struggling to make a living in Beijing. By chance, he begins to write eulogies for…
Panorama
For the past year, Sandra, her husband Samuel, and their eleven-year-old son Daniel have lived a secluded life in a remote town in the French Alps. When Samuel is found…
Documentaries, Panorama
Wim Wenders’ portrait of the artist Anselm Kiefer is a mesmerizing cinematic experience in 3D and a stunning exploration of Kiefer’s life, work and methodology. One of the most innovative…
Kau Ka Hōkū Award Nominee, Southeast Asian Showcase
ASOG is a screwball tragicomedy starring a cast of real life Super Typhoon survivors. Jaya is a non-binary teacher and comedian who survived Super Typhoon Haiyan. Picking up the pieces…
Documentaries, New American Perspectives
In 1984, eccentric guru Shoko Asahara founded a yoga school in Japan’s capital. Ten years later, the school has morphed into the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult which manufactured nerve gas…
Spotlight on Japan
Sakura Ando (SHOPLIFTERS, MONSTER) plays Neri, a ruthless con woman who helps run complex-and profitable-phone scams in the slums of Osaka. When her younger half-brother Joe (Ryosuke Yamada) gets out…
Documentaries, Indigenous Lens, Kau Ka Hōkū Award Nominee
Rebecca Landsberry-Baker and Joe Peeler's BAD PRESS, which world premiered at Sundance, chronicles a political battle over media freedom that resonates well beyond the Native American communities depicted. When the…
Kau Ka Hōkū Award Nominee, Spotlight on Taiwan
The World is a transitory inn for all creatures, and time is a transient passenger passing through all generations. — Li Bai Faye (Ariel Lin) is an architect at a…
Centerpiece Presentation, Spotlight on Korea
In the opening moments of director Um Tae-hwa’s riveting new disaster epic, an earthquake renders much of Seoul a smoldering ruin. But as survivors begin efforts to restore order, it…
Spotlight on Taiwan
A-rui has run the family hairdressers in an old-fashioned area of Taichung for more than 40 years. With her tireless attitude and her stylist skills, she is a community institution.…
HIFF Extreme
What if THE WALKING DEAD was set in the Hawaiian Islands? Ten years after a worldwide zombie outbreak, a group of seafaring survivors finds refuge with a tropical island community,…
Documentaries, Green Screen
Directed by Matthieu Rytz (ANOTE’S ARK, HIFF 2018), this exquisite fly-on-the-wall environmental doc is also a gripping and up-to-the-minute tale of geopolitical, scientific, and corporate intrigue that exposes the destructive…
Panorama
Singaporean filmmaker Anthony Chen’s first English-language project assumes the intimate perspective of a woman in limbo. Living in self-exile on a Greek island, Jacqueline, a Liberian refugee, spends her days…
Documentaries
When Bruce Lee died in 1974 at the peak of his superstardom, he had completed only four feature films. But within hours of his funeral, Hong Kong movie studios began…
Spotlight on Japan
Deep in the forest of the small rural village Harasawa, single parent Takumi lives with his young daughter, Hana, and takes care of odd jobs for locals, chopping wood and…