Now in its twenty-sixth edition, the Far East Film Festival of Udine continues to be, on a global level, one of the most eagerly awaited events dedicated to Asian cinema. The event which has been held annually in the Friulian capital for almost three decades, finds and selects the best of Far Eastern and South Asian cinema, celebrating and presenting it to the Italian public, but also to the international one who crowds en masse city, some of the works that most captured the popular imagination in the second half of the previous year, but also acting as a showcase to introduce some films that have not yet debuted in their country.
Guest of honor at this edition and who on May 2nd, the closing day of the festival, will receive the Golden Mulberry for Lifetime Achievement is Zhang Yimou, one of the first Chinese filmmakers to have modernized his country’s cinema by bringing a breath of fresh air and one of the figures who, according to Sabrina Baracetti and Thomas Bertacchi themselves (founders of the festival), somehow inspired, through his cinema, the creation of the event in the Friulian capital. Two of the director’s most significant works, restored, will be screened: Red Lanterns from 1991, a work which, together with Sorgo Rosso, introduced Chinese cinema to the general international public, and Vivere! from 1994. Also by the Chinese filmmaker, Under the Light will also be presented in competition, a political thriller released in his country in 2023 and which Zhang had already had in production for some years.
Among the 75 films presented in this year’s edition, China, the Philippines, South Korea, Hong Kong and Japan are, as has often happened in the past, the most represented areas, with some works, less than in previous years to say the least truth, also coming from Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand.
The festival will open on Thursday 24 April with two blockbuster works in their respective markets in the first months of 2024, the Chinese YOLO, directed and starring Jia Ling and a remake of the Japanese success 100 Yen Love, followed by the South Korean comedy Citizen Of A Kind. While the first is a semi-comic story of a woman’s redemption through her meeting with a boxing coach and the sport he plays, the Korean film directed by Park Young-ju stages the revenge of a woman, victim of a telephone scam through which she was robbed of a large sum of money. Still remaining in the cinema of the Asian peninsula, other films that have conquered the South Korean public and box office and present in Udine are 12.12: The Daythe most watched home movie in the country during 2023 and set after the 1979 coup, and Exhuma, a supernatural horror already screened in Berlin at the beginning of the year. They also come from South Korea The Roundup: Punishmentthe fourth installment of the popular period action and science fiction film series Alienoid and its sequel Alienoid: Return to the Future. Works that in some way exemplify that trend towards the creation of sequels and various chapters of franchises which seems to be the trademark of a certain type of South Korean cinema in recent years.
Among the works coming from Hong Kong it will be presented The Goldfinger, a film written and directed by Felix Chong and starring Tony Leung and Andy Lau. The feature film chronicles the rise, corruption and subsequent fall of a Hong Kong financial company during the 1980s and received six awards at the latest Hong Kong Film Awards, including Best Male Performance going to Leung . At the same event, the award for best actress went to Jennifer Yu for her performance as a journalist who investigates abuses and scandals in a hospice and the meaning of her work in modern society, in the thriller In Broad Daylight, directed by Lawrence Kan and a film that will be screened in the Friulian capital.
It returns to a crucial period for the development of the country and its population, Old Fox by the Taiwanese Hsiao Yu-chuan, a film set after the end of Martial Law on the island and which tells of the relationship between an eleven-year-old boy and an older man and how the two go through the epochal changes of the time.
As regards the Japanese archipelago, it will be interesting to see the world premiere of Bushido, a story of revenge set in the Edo period and a new work by Shiraishi Kazuya, director of The Blood of Wolves, Dare to Stop Us but also of the valuable series Kamen Rider Black Sun. Gold Boy it is instead the latest work by Kaneko Shusuke, author of perhaps the best kaiju films ever made, the trilogy of Gamera (1995-1999), which here instead explores the protagonist’s obsession towards the realization of the perfect crime.
As we said at the beginning, this year’s great guest of the Far East will be Zhang Yimou, but the Taiwanese producer Chiu Fu-sheng, who pulled the strings and was fundamental, will also be there to collect the Golden Mulberry for Lifetime Achievement. for the creation of some of the masterpieces of Asian and world cinema such as A City of Sadness And The Puppetmaster by Hou Hsiao-Hsien o The Mission by Johnnie To.
Ishibashi Eiko, a Japanese musician, singer and composer who collaborated with Hamaguchi Ryusuke on the music of Drive My Car. The idea of was born precisely from the partnership with the Japanese director and from a live performance accompanied by images of Hamaguchi Evil doesn’t exist, Ishibashi will re-propose in the Friulian capital the very musical performance from which the film awarded the Silver Lion was born, Gifton April 28 at the Teatro Nuovo Giovanni da Udine.
Among the specials dedicated to the cinema of the past, do not miss the screenings of two of the best feature films directed by Somai Shinji, Moving (1993), and Typhoon Club (1985), and that of Shall We Dance? (1996) by Suo Masayuki. This as far as Japanese cinema is concerned, on the South Korean side however, seven works dating back to the 1950s and restored by the Korean Film Archive will be presented, a way to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the organization founded in 1974 which, always worth worth remembering, it makes hundreds of classic feature films from the Asian country’s filmography available on its YouTube page; although, of course, they should be seen on the big screen.
Tags: Asian imagination Udine poster
