Missing Johnny (Taiwan, 2017) [NYAFF 2018]
A cardinal rule in contemporary Taiwan cinema is that Hou Hsiao-hsien can simply do no wrong. Seeing his name grace a film’s opening credits is...
The Return (Denmark, 2018) [NYAFF 2018]
A definite eye-opening film in this year’s New York Asian Film Festival is Malene Choi Jensen’s feature-length debut The Return. Like the title, the film...
Counters (South Korea, 2017) [NYAFF 2018]
“Destroy Koreatown! Let’s bring [Koreans] to the gas chambers!” shouts Makoto Sakurai, leader of Zaitoku, a self-proclaimed “civic group against the privileges of Korean-Japanese people.”...
End of Summer (China, 2017) [NYAFF 2018]
Zhou Quan’s meditative coming-of-age feature begins with the sounds of soccer and a young boy’s face as he stares into the camera. This is our...
Hit the Night (South Korea, 2017) [NYAFF 2018]
Independent filmmaker Jeong Ga-young’s second feature-length film is about a woman and a man having a series of conversations about sexual desires, fantasies, preferences, and...
Neomanila (Philippines, 2017) [NYAFF 2018]
Mikhail Red’s third feature Neomanila follows Toto (Timothy Castillo), an orphan living on the streets of Manila after his older brother is arrested for drug-related...
The Scythian Lamb (Japan, 2017) [NYAFF 2018]
You can never truly know another person, so goes the old existentialist saying. It’s not necessarily that people hide various aspects of their character and...
Gatao 2: Rise of the King (Taiwan, 2018) [NYAFF 2018]
Gatao 2: Rise of the King is nominally a sequel to Gatao, the 2015 Taiwanese film directed by Joe C. Lee Wan-Kit. But, as the...
The Blood of Wolves (Japan, 2018) [NYAFF 2018]
Hiroshima is a prefecture with lots of natural beauty but filmmakers do like to find drama in the dark underbelly of the place, perhaps most...
Beast Stalker (Hong Kong, 2008) [NYAFF 2018]
Although not as robust as in its heyday from the 1970s-1990s, Hong Kong action cinema still churns out pulse-pounding police thrillers, crime dramas, and neo-noirs...