Director Im Sang-soo (THE HOUSEMAID) returns with his most endearing and heartfelt film to date. Busan IFF 2021 Opening Night Film, HEAVEN: TO THE LAND OF HAPPINESS is a fresh take on the fugitive buddy road movie (à la THELMA & LOUISE). Prisoner 203 (Choi Min-sik) only has a few months left on his sentence, …
When a sensational news story hits the headlines about a student’s suicide after alleged assault by her teacher, it is not long before the teacher also takes his own life. Upon learning of the case, intrepid documentary filmmaker Yuko strikes out to learn the truth behind the incident for a new television special. In search …
Does a good deed ever go unpunished? A master at weaving pristinely entangled webs that promise to loom for decades to come, Asghar Farhadi returns to the Festival with A HERO, co-winner of this year’s Cannes Grand Prix, and Farhadi’s most singular and shattering film since his Oscar-winning A SEPARATION (2011). Rahim (the brilliant Amir …
ALONG THE SEA follows three Vietnamese women in their early 20s, Phuong, An, and Nhu. They moved to Japan to work as technical trainees. When they decide to escape their workplace, where their passports have been confiscated, they become illegal migrants in the country. A broker, based in a quiet fishermen village, helps them to …
From newcomer Cao Jinling comes the stunningly beautiful and hauntingly resonant ANIMA. A family drama, survival story and environmental siren call, the film captures a country in transition and the loss of an indigenous way of life in the face of encroaching modernity. 1980s Inner Mongolia. Tutu and his little brother Linzi belong to the …
HIFF is proud to present the US Premiere of the long awaited ANITA, a biopic spanning the life and legacy of legendary singer and actress Anita Mui. A household name in Hong Kong, queen of Canto pop, Anita Mui was the very definition of a cultural icon during Hong Kong’s golden age in the eighties …
If humans could live forever, should we? Does life have meaning without death? Melding human drama with philosophical exploration, this lyrical sci-fi from director Kei Ishikawa (GUKOROKU: TRACES OF SIN, HIFF 2017) seeks to pose rather than answer these questions. Sporting immaculate, crisp, cool set designs and lush cinematography, ARC envelopes the viewer in a …
Halle Berry makes her directorial debut while starring as a washed-up MMA fighter struggling for redemption as both an athlete and a mother. Berry plays Jackie “aka Justice,”, a washed up MMA fighter scraping by in life working multiple jobs and trying to make ends meet. When her boyfriend coaxes her to attend an underground …
Johnny (Joaquin Phoenix) and his young nephew (Woody Norman) forge a tenuous but transformational relationship when they are unexpectedly thrown together in this delicate and deeply moving story about the connections between adults and children, the past and the future, from writer-director Mike Mills (BEGINNERS, 20TH CENTURY WOMEN).
