Festival Reports

In 2024, TIFF is in its 49th year. This is one of the most prestigious film festivals in the world, after Cannes, Berlin, Venice, and Sundance. The fact that it continues to host a Netpac Jury should not be taken for granted; it is important to nurture Netpac’s relationship with TIFF by cooperating with them in selecting a jury worthy of the festival’s standing. Canada does not have a Netpac chapter like Hawaiʻi, which means that the two jury members chosen by TIFF for 2024 are not members of Netpac. (Note: At one time, Hannah Fisher was an active/paid member.)

NETPAC JURY:

Chair: Vilsoni Hereniko, filmmaker, professor, President of NETPAC/USA.

Jury Members: Hannah Fisher, former festival director; international consultant.

Kerri Sakamoto, award-winning Japanese- Canadian author.

FILMS IN COMPETITION:

1. A Sister’s Tale – Switzerland, France, Iran.
2. Addition – Australia
3. All We Imagine As Light – France, India, Netherlands, Luxemburg
4. April – Italy, France, Georgia
5. Boong – India
6. Bound in Heaven – China
7. Crocodile Tears – Indonesia, France, Singapore, Germany
8. Dead Talents Society
9. Don’t Cry, Butterfly -Vietnam, Singapore, Phillipines, India
10. Edge of Night – Germany
11. Gulizar – Turkey, Kosovo
12. Ka Whawhai Tonu – Struggle With No End – New Zealand
13. Love in the Big City – South Korea
14. Men of War – USA, Canada
15. Mistress Dispeller – China, USA
16. My Sunshine – Japan, France
17. No Other Land -Palestine, Norway
18. Saba – Bangladesh
19. Shook – Canada
20. The Deb – Australia
21. The Last of the Sea Women – USA
22. The Mountain – New Zealand
23. The Paradise of Thorns – Thailand
24. Vice is Broke -USA
25. Went Up the Hill – New Zealand, Australia

WINNER:

After much deliberation, the jury decided to give the award to The Last of the Sea Women. Two other films were strong contenders: No Other Country and Bound in Heaven.

Below are the short and the long citations for the winning film The Last of the Sea Women.

Short:

“The Netpac Award is given to The Last of the Sea Women for its moving and illuminating portrayal of the lives of the haenyeo, a group of elderly female divers on Jeju island off the coast of South Korea, who are struggling against global warming and ocean pollution to keep a unique and vital cultural practice alive.” 

Long:

“The 2024 NETPAC jury award goes to The Last of the Sea Women for its moving and illuminating portrayal of the lives of the haenyeo, a group of elderly female divers on Jeju island, off the coast of South Korea. These women are sea warriors struggling against global warming and ocean pollution to keep a unique cultural practice alive. It is rare that a filmmaker would choose to highlight, elevate, and celebrate the daily struggles of women in their 60s and 70s, especially those from marginalized communities far from the centers of power. Director Sue Kim depicts the lives of these warriors on land and in the sea with beauty, humor, and compassion. It is a story that inspires and calls us to action.”

COMMENTS ON THE PROCESS:

This year, the coordinator of the jury worked hard before jury duties started to ensure that links to films online were available to the jury members in a timely manner. It is unclear to me why about half the films were viewed online and about another half were viewed in a proper theater. This was a great disadvantage to filmmakers whose work was viewed on the small screen, sometimes with low resolution and watermarks on them that say “FOR PREVIEW PURPOSES ONLY” or had the name of the coordinator or the jury member running across every frame of the film. Although I brought this up with the coordinator, watermarks remained on many of the films I viewed and made total engagement with the world of the film challenging. 

CONCLUDING REMARKS:

All things considered, hosting the NETPAC jury this year was a great success. The jury got along very well with each other, there were no tensions evident during our deliberations (although there were differences in opinion we respected and listened to each other’s views).  TIFF also gave the jury a coordinator who proved to be more than competent and very attentive to the daily needs of the jury. A big thank-you to the wonderful coordinator for the 2024 TIFF jury, Judy Seulgi Park (in white in the picture below).

 by Vilsoni Hereniko

The 2nd Da Nang Asian Film Festival (Vietnam) took place from 2 to 6 July 2024

The 63 films in the selection are divided into 7 sections: 

Asian in-competition films includes 13 feature films from China, South Korea, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Australia (Asia-Pacific). Among these thirteen films shot in 2023 and 2024, 18 youth by South Korean director Ei Il Seon is a world premiere. 

They are judged by the International Jury chaired by the writer-director Dai Sijie (Balzac and the little Chinese tailor), the other members are Mariette Rissenbeek (Berlin festival), Georges Goldenstern (Cannes festival), Tran Nu Yen Khé (actress: l'Odeur de la papaye verte, etc.) and Ha Le Diem, Vietnamese director (Children of the Mist).

Vietnamese in-competition films consists of 10 feature films made, one in 2022, seven in 2023 and two in 2024. They are very varied: soap opera, horror, fantasy, history, costume film, romance, family film, etc.

These 10 films compete for prizes awarded by the National Jury and the Netpac jury.

Stanley Kwan, director, producer and screenwriter (Hong Kong) chairs the national jury with Lorna Tee, producer, programmer (Malaysia), Le Khanh, Vietnamese actress (Vertical Summer, …), Tran Thi Bich Ngoc, producer (Vietnam), Leon Quang Le, director (USA - Vietnam). 

The president of the Netpac Jury is Jean-Marc Thérouanne, co-director and co-founder of the Festival International des Cinémas d'Asie in Vesoul (France), the other two members are Mara Matta, research professor at the University of Rome (Italy) and Phan Thi Bich Ha, professor in cinema (Vietnam)

Vietnamese cinema today consists of 18 feature and short films, documentaries and animation. Festival-goers vote for one of these 18 films to award the audience prize. 

Selected Films by people’s artist: Director Dang NhatMinh: this retrospective offers to see and see again, in the presence of Dang Nhat Minh, aged 86, the last 7 feature films of the master of Vietnamese cinema including his testament film Jasmin.

A day entitled Signature Style Of Director Dang Nhat Minh is devoted to the study of films and short stories by Dang Nhat Minh, director and writer, to emphasize the importance and multiplicity of his talents. Seven speakers, six Vietnamese academics and a French festival director (Jean-Marc Thérouanne) followed one another to show the multiple facets, complexity and coherence of a life’s work in the service of cinema and literature. 

Focus on French cinema and French film about Vietnam is a selection of 8 auteur films, including Jean-Jacques Annaud’s The Lover, or genre (fantasy, science-fiction, etc.).

To complete this presentation of the historical ties between France and Vietnam, a day is devoted to the relations between French cinema and Vietnamese cinema under the high patronage of the French Embassy in Vietnam and the French Institute, in the presence of SEM Olivier Brochet, Ambassador of France to Vietnam. 

Films about Da Nang consists of 4 documentary films related to Da Nang. 

Varan Documentary series is a selection of 3 documentary films from Ateliers Varan in Vietnam. The director Tran Phuong Thao (Worker’s dream) has been the linchpin for twenty years. The Ateliers Varan through their training work have forged strong links between France and Vietnam. 

In addition to the traditional Question/Answer debates at the end of the film screenings with the film teams, there is also a panel discussion on Sharing Experiences and Networking Coastal Film Festivals. Opportunities for Da Nang City and DANAFF, Seminar International co-production, experience and Development solution, Talent Incubator workshop. 

The opening and closing ceremonies of the 2nd Da Nang Asian Film Festival take place at the Ariyana Convention Hall, where all the world’s greats, from the Emperor of Japan, to Donald Trump, through Vladimir Putin or Xi Jiping deliver their protocol speeches when they come to Vietnam.

The opening ceremony of the Festival places special emphasis on festival guests (film teams, honorary guests, jury members, sponsors). For the closing ceremony, the anticipation of the announcement of the winners is naturally highlighted. 

In total, 14 prizes were distributed in 2 categories: Asian films and Vietnamese films. To this is added the NETPAC Award for Best Vietnamese Film and the Audience Award for the most acclaimed Vietnamese film among those participating in the Current Vietnamese Cinema program.

This last prize was awarded to a series of cartoons: The carp of the genius of the home, The strange village of the sweet potato and These funny unicorn dancers. The NETPAC Prize for Best Vietnamese Film was awarded to Face off 7: A Wishdu director Ly Hai. The Netpac jury justified its choice with these words: 

“FOR the HEARTWARMING RENDITION OF A UNIVERSAL STORY THAT CONVEYS, in REALISTIC STYLE AND ACCOMPLISHED PERFORMANCES, THE HUMAN TRAGEDY OF ONE OWN’s PARENTS’ AGING AND PASSING AWAY”

In the Vietnam Film Award category, no screenwriter was awarded. The Best Actor Award was given to Thai Hoa in the film Nhot Is Dying to Marry. The Best Actress Award went to Phuong Anh Dào in the film Mai, thanks to which Tran Thành won the Best Director Award. Mai also won the Best Vietnamese Film Award, while the Best Cast Award went to Face Off 7: A Wish. 

In the Asian Film Awards category, the best screenwriter was Liu Jiayin with the film Precious Lives. The Best Actor Award went to Wu Kang Ren in Eternal Wish. The Best Actress Award went to Yuumi Kawai in Ann’s Life. Vietnamese filmmaker Pham Thiên An won the Best Director Award for L'arbre aux papillons d'or, which won the Caméra d'or in the Directors' Fortnight selection at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.

The Special Jury Prize was awarded to Ann’s Life and finally, the best Asian film is Cu Li Never Cries by director-screenwriter Pham Ngoc Lân. If we had to summarize the Da Nang Asian Film Festival in a few words: professionalism, sense of welcome, serious, fraternal.

Looking forward to the 3rd Festival!

Jean-Marc THEROUANNE​

Chairperson of the NETPAC Jury

Co-Director, Vesoul International Film Festival for Asian Cinema

The Busan International Short Film Festival held from 25 – 30 April 2024 screened one hundred and thirty-six short fiction, documentary and animation films from forty-three countries. This was the festival’s forty-first edition. It is the oldest film festival in Busan, city of beautiful beaches, dizzyingly tall skyscrapers, the smell of sea food wafting slong the street markets, and home to the well-known Busan International Film Festival, one of the most important festivals in the world. The BISFF began by showcasing only Korean films, but from 2010 it has gone international. This year’s edition had, in addition to the international competition and the Korean competition, several other sections. There was, for instance, the experimental and immersive works section - the ‘3D Cinema’ programme, the ‘XR’ programme and the ‘Interactive’ programme. The festival has been recognized by cinema academies around the world and has become a qualifying event for the BAFTA Awards, the Academy Awards, the Goyas, and the Canadian Screen Awards. The festival also had masterclasses, special lectures and workshops.

The ‘Guest of Honour’ at the festival this year was Italy. The inauguration had a well-known Italian pianist play to the images of famous Italian films, including the neo-realist ones by Rossellini, De Sica and Fellini. The poster for the festival was inspired by Fellini’s La Strada. The opening ceremony had an artist create a part of the poster for the festival with a paintbrush attached to a drone on the stage.  

NETPAC Jury members (From left to Right in the): Ms. YOUN Sungeun (Republic of Korea)  Prof. Ms. Rashmi Doraiswamy (India) Chairperson  Ms. Nishitani Kaoru (Japan)

Reality, Virtuality

The theme of the festival this year was ‘Cinema and Reality’. Among the three films screened at the inauguration was My Mother’s Story by Kim Soyoung and Jang Minhee (2023). It was an impressive South Korean animation that dealt with a mother reminiscing about her life to her daughter. Her memories encapsulated the history of Korea. The daughter imagines her mother’s home, and draws it, with a bird that flies over all boundaries and reaches the home of her mother’s childhood. 

Koi Wang Chao’s Chuf Chuf Chuf (2023) was a Macao-Taiwanese production, a short fiction, that portrayed the theme of the of the festival of virtuality and reality. A woman and man are travelling in a train with the world passing by the window. It is not clear who is ‘real’ and who is being ‘imagined’. The woman gets off the train at the end, pulling her trolley bag along. Was this virtual reality, where a journey can be undertaken as a game?

Family Relationships

Shalini Adnani White Ant (UK/India 2023) tells the story of an elderly man who returns to his ancestral home to find that it is infested with termites. When the termites are cleared, the house collapses. Were they destroying the house or holding it up? The white ants are a metaphor for familial and societal relationships. The idea of the carnival, a travelling van-carousel (odong odong) is explored in Basri and Salma in a Never-Ending Comedy by Khozy Rizal (Indonesia, 2023, fiction). The images of the colourfully lit up van going in the night to far off places, bringing joy to children, are mesmerising. The irony is that this couple who bring joy to children have a complicated relationship with their family and between themselves on the issue of children. 

Han Changlok’s Peeper (South Korea, 2023, fiction) explored the broken relationship between a father and daughter by stylizing the father’s affairs through dance movements in a stable where people with masks look like horses. This ‘story’ is narrated by a fan who walks up to a film director and tells him that she can give him an idea for his new film. Park Jubin’s Gazagaze (South Korea, 2023) is a fiction short about the mental block an animator faces, because he has to deliver hundreds of drawings before a deadline. There were other short films, too, at the festival that referred to mental health or psychological issues. 

Sports and Beyond

There were films on sports that managed to speak of larger issues in their ‘short’ narratives. Wen Qi and Z Zheng’s fiction short Questions to Heaven (China, 2023) dealt with a girl overcoming her fear of swimming. It stretched the narrative of this personal fear to questions posed centuries ago by thinkers to the universe. Another interesting film on the theme of sports was Cho Heesoo’s experimental documentary Ironman Triathlon (South Korea, 2024) which examined the sportsman’s need to push oneself to excel, the proximity to drugs and death and the humble origins of many of the sportsmen for whom this is a make-or-break profession. The film was visually interesting with athletes leaving traces of running on snow like a cosmic design; cycling with the camera rotating with the wheel and stylization of actors’ movements. 

Migrants and Outsiders

The issue of migration and migrants was dealt with in some of the competition films. Of these Daood Alabdulaa’s documentary Fata Morgana (Germany/Syria, 2023) was an international coproduction and portrayed the life of a migrant labourer who is working as a truck driver, transporting materials for the construction of stadiums for the World Cup in Qatar. His life is all about waiting in queues of trucks that take sand from one place to another location, where they have to wait in line again. In Lee Sunu’s The Net (South Korea, 2024, fiction), Rahul is an illegal immigrant whose choices unleash a tragic chain of results. Yun Doyeong’s Slaughter (South Korea, 2023)  depicts the special relationship with a cow that a worker develops on a farm where they are bred for beef. Even though he needs the money that he would earn from every slaughter to sustain his family, he finds he does not have the ‘masculine’ ability to kill. The film charts his ironic journey from being unable to slaughter to becoming one who trains others in the job. Morad Mostafa’s I Promise you Paradise (Egypt/France/Qatar, 2023) is about a father who is determined to save his little daughter after a violent incident in Egypt, even if this means sending her away and being separated from her.

The NETPAC Award went to Omer Ferhat Ozmen’s fiction short, Minus One (Turkey, 2024). In an apartment block, the new tenants in the basement become the object of a signature campaign. The owner of the block finds a ‘strange’ smell coming from their flat, so he meets the other tenants of the huge apartment building, with its ornamental winding staircase, to have them thrown out. In the short span of less than fifteen minutes (14’47’’) it manages to convey complex ideas on diversity, intolerance and acceptance.

The Transmedia Forum

The BISFF was preceded by a one and a half day long Forum on ‘Reality, Virtuality and Cinema’ on 24^th and 25^th April. There were thought-provoking presentations by Korean and foreign experts on AI, virtual production, virtual humans, 3D media broadcasting services, visual storytelling and activism, home movies archive, new viewing practices from the public to the private and new narratives in the old and new media followed by insightful commentaries by the discussants. The second day had presentations by Bill Morrison and Pip Chodorow with a screening of Morrison’s latest work, Incident. Bill Morrison usually uses found footage to make his films. Incident marks a break with his previous filmmaking because it creates a testimony of a shooting incident in which an African American is shot by police officers and there is an attempt at a cover-up. The bodycams of the police officers, dashcam footage, footage from surveillance cameras and mappings from Google Earth are used to create parallel images on the split screen, where all run simultaneously at the same time. The ‘testimony’ is not of one person, but is non-human. It is that which emerges from the disjuncture in the narratives of all these parallel images. The truth of the incident becomes evident in the automatically recorded footage, despite the attempts of the police officers to self-censor what they are saying when they are being recorded. Bill Morrison presented his own work and this was followed by a talk by Chodorow entitled ‘Bill Morrison’s Reality Show’, analysing Morrison’s work and placing it in the context of how the very concept of the panopticon has changed with the advent of new media. 

The Busan Transmedia Forum (BITF) and the Busan International Short Film Festival (BISFF) put together much food for thought in the week-long events of discussion, presentations and films in their wonderful city. 

WRITTEN BY Dr. Rashmi Doraiswamy

Chairperson of  the NETPAC Jury (India)

Dr Rashmi Doraiswamy studied Russian language and literature at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.  Her doctoral thesis was on Mikhail Bakhtin, the Russian philosopher. She is Professor at the Academy of International  Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. 

Her writings on literature and cinema have been published in prestigious Indian and foreign publications. She was the recipient of the National Award for the Best Film Critic in 1994. She was awarded the MAJLIS research fellowship in 1999 for a project entitled ‘Changing Narrative Strategies of Hindi Cinema’.  

Her entry on ‘Film and Literature (India)’ has appeared in the Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Literatures in English (Routledge, 2005). Her entries on Indian and foreign cinemas have appeared in The Little Black Book: Movies (Cassell Illustrated, London, 2007). ). She is author of The Post-Soviet Condition: Chingiz Aitmatov in the ’90s (Aakar, 2005) and Guru Dutt: Through Light and Shade (Wisdom Tree, 2008). She is editor of Cultural Histories of Central Asia (Aakar, 2009), Energy Security: Central Asia, India and the Neighbourhood  (2013) and Perspectives on Multiculturalism: Pre-Soviet, Soviet and Post-Soviet Central Asia (2013).  She is co-editor of Being and Becoming: The Cinemas of Asia (Macmillan, 2002), Globalisation and the Third World (Manak, 2009) and Asian Film Journeys: Selections from Cinemaya (Wisdom Tree, 2010).

She has participated in national and international seminars on cultural issues and has served on several statutory and non-statutory film festival and critics juries in India (including the national award critic, documentary and feature film juries) and abroad (Mannheim, Taiwan, Sochi, Toronto, Karlovy Vary, Alma Ata, Busan). She was associated for many years with Cinemaya, The Asian Film Quarterly, where she worked as Assistant,  Deputy and Executive Ediitor in an honorary capacity.  She has served on the Preview Committee for films for the International Film Festival of India for several years.  She has lectured extensively on cinema at film appreciation courses. She was on the guest faculty for many years at the Mass Communications and Research Centre at Jamia Millia Islamia.  

The FIAPF accredited 15^th Bengaluru International Film Festival run by the Karnataka Chalanachitra Academy, Government of Karnataka, and presided over by the Honourable Chief Minister Shri. Siddaramaiah was held in the capital of the state of Bangalore from the 29th of February to March 7th, 2024. ‘Sandalwood’ is the entertainment industry moniker and 2024 saw it celebrate its 90-year milestone. It was also the 50^th anniversary of the State being named Karnataka. Some 5000+ Kannada films have been produced across these 9 decades.

This industry has grown from a handful of production companies to 200 plus and they make over 300 films annually. Kannada is the main language of the state of Karnataka, where it is spoken natively by 40.6 million people, or about two thirds of the state's population. Kannada art titles make the rounds of the international festival circuit while domestically the discerning film goer/local audience also support the big budget extravaganzas and commercial cinema. The 15^th edition presided over by Artistic Director Shri. N Vidyashankar was the 13^th edition he has worked on since his involvement in establishing, along with others, this cinema delight. It is clear the government (election year) sees cinema as a powerful tool for education and social cohesion and a way to integrate these cinematic learnings viewed by audience throngs into the community’s fabric. Thematically the festival was looking at upholding human dignity, social justice, environmental concerns, and women’s involvement alongside addressing gender inequalities. I am pleased to report there were many women jurors across the five juries of impressive international and local industry and academic, literary stalwarts. The Artistic Director had just under three months to assemble this impressive festival both creatively and logistically. 320 film entries had to be reduced to 36. They gave a 10-day entry submission window and were inundated. Four selection committees reduced the submissions.

The Kannada Cinema Competition Jury co-ordinated by NETPAC was chaired by me alongside eminent colleagues Andronika Martonova from Bulgaria and Dr Rajappa Dalavai from Bangalore. We had 12 Kannada films in competition that looked at micro and macro concerns. I would add that powerlessness, revenge and masculine violence play out in many of these films underpinning the social barriers and patriarchy structures existing. Corruption is also a common theme – “Corruption is an everyday story.” (Dooradarshana). Twin themes featured in several films mirroring the logo of the Festival, the Ganda berunda the two headed bird of Hindu mythology. It is said to have magical powers and was the emblem of the Mysore dynasty under wodeyar kingdom. It is still the official emblem of Karnataka as it is considered to have immense strength. Village films superseded those of urban modernity. The portrayal of women in much of these films was of strong, nagging, and demanding women versus subservient. In most films we saw the exceptional ecology and landscapes of the State of Karnataka, something most in this state are immensely proud of. Biodiversity and ecology were strong themes in the Ricky Kej (three-time Grammy award winner) extraordinary performances at the Opening Night festivities of the 15^th BIFFes. A delight for fellow juror Andronika and myself was the exceptional trailer for the festival honouring the ancient folk-art traditions of the region. It was a privilege to see these 12 selected Kannada films. Naanu Ivala Abhimani by Vinod Kumar G was a platform to advocate for cochlear implant surgery and disability in general. Dealing with the tale of a 12-year-old girl who was born deaf due to interfamily marriage. Alindia Radio by Rangaswamy S a period piece deals with the influence of radio on a common man who sang the history of Madappa and how it leads to his ultimate demise. Chow Chow Bath by Kenja Chethan Kumar touts itself as one of the first Hyperlink Romantic comedies in the local industry. An intertwining mostly urban narrative of six characters who navigate the heady perfume of love, man’s obsession with woman and the societal pressures to marry. Dooradarshana by Sukesh Shetty another period piece explores how a tranquil village life is disrupted when a television comes to town. Alongside this are themes of corruption, loss of friendship and striving for love destinies. Garuda Purana by Manjunath B Nagba is an urban serial killer police crime thriller with a romantic story sideline. Kandeelu by K Yashoda Prakash, the one female director in competition, deals with the important issue of locals who pass away whilst working overseas to support their families and the sense of powerlessness and difficulties of navigating village recriminations, customs, superstitions, and the labyrinth of bureaucracy barriers to try and bring their loved ones home for last rights. Kshetrapathi by Shrikant Katagi is an epic price-gouging corruption revenge film of farmer suicides and the ensuing farmer fightback and strikes.

This commercial film weaves around these struggles and the loss of farming practices to big business and how big business purchase price does not cover the cost of agricultural production. “Nothing humiliates a man more than hunger and poverty.” Commercial village bro-film Lineman by V Raghu Shastry looks at townsfolk who are reliant on electricity and wish to mark the 100-year birthday of their village midwife. However, a nesting bird at the powerplant divides the village as the lineman cuts power to save the eggs. The dual eco-system story plays out; that of the eggs and that of the village. “Man is a sinner son. You can’t touch the bird eggs. The mother won’t sit on them.” “There is light, and dark inside us.” Ravike Prasanga by Santhosh Kodankeri is finally a courtroom satire that delves into the areas of objectification of women, sexual repression, patriarchy, and coercive control. Is marriage the end game for women? It centres around a young woman wanting to do something extraordinary with her blouse to meet her intended match and the tailor confused by numerous changes by the client, gets it wrong. She wants revenge for her deep sense of lost opportunity. Swathi Mutthina Male Haniye directed by Raj B Shetty is his first attempt at a love story and it is remarkable. “To love as a woman is not wrong. If you ask me as a woman who is married, it is wrong, but as a woman, it is not. I am glad you found it.” Shetty also made two films in one year including this awarded film and works in multiple genres including experimental. This is a talent to watch. “I want to die as only a human being. A no-one.” Chosen unanimously by the Jury as the receiver of the NETPAC Award the citation reads:  For its masterful sensitivity and artistic achievements in all cinematic departments. For its visual and narrative poetry, and universal profundity of how to transcend finally, this mortal coil with dignity and grace.  A deeply moving portrayal of those who assist the dying and those left behind. 

Tatsama Tadbhava by Vishal Atreya is a police crime thriller centring on psychological fractures and good versus evil. Does it preside in us all? Nirvana by Amar L is an atmospheric film set in heavy rainfall as a heavily pregnant young woman, about to have her first child, is alone for a day and evening.

Written by Maxine Williamson – (Australia) Chairperson of the NETPAC Jury. 

On the threshold of its third decade, the Kolkata International Film Festival held on 5-12 December 2023 returned bigger than ever, with over 200 films across 22 programs shown on 23 screens around the state cultural capital, along with talks, masterclasses, exhibits, and the annual Satyajit Ray Memorial Lecture.

From the festive opening night at the Netaji Indoor Stadium befitting the incomparable movie fandom in India through the daily long lines and packed screenings to the emotional closing ceremony at Nandan, the droves of people—the culturati alongside the adoring mass audience—enthralled by the diverse selection of world cinema were a sight to behold for a first-time observer like me.

KIFF’s deep appreciation of regional formations in cinema particularly interested me. Apart from the International Competition, the festival promoted overlapping notions of regional cinema: the documentary and short forms competing on a national scale, filmmaking in subnational regions in various Indian languages, and a special interest in the festival’s home region’s proud Bengali cinema tradition.

A MULTIFACETED “ASIAN” REGION

Even the Asia Select, awarded by the Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema (NETPAC), whose jury I chaired, featured seven films that projected a broader imagination of Asian cinema, a region all too often typified primarily, if not only, by East Asian films. Interestingly, in this case, East Asia is not represented.

From Central Asia came Kyrgyzstani Asel Zhuraeva’s God’s Gift; from South Asia, Bangladeshi Syeda Neegar Banu’s Barren Waters, Indian Pranab Aich’s Nanda School of Tradition, and Nepalis Rajan Kathet and Sunir Pandey’s No Winter Holidays, from Southeast Asia, Filipino Joel Lamangan’s Walker and the Burmese collective Ninefold Mosaic’s Broken Dreams: Stories from the Myanmar Coup; and from West Asia, And, Towards Happy Alleys, a documentary about repression in Iran made by Indian filmmaker Sreemoyee Singh.

NETPAC Jury at the Kolkata International Film Festival

MARGINALIZED PLACES, FORMAL EXPLORATIONS

Some films looked back on the formal traditions of their respective film cultures and retraced them anew. They opened windows for their viewers to witness often literally remote, socially marginalized, and figuratively hidden places.

God’s Gift derives its power from the folktale structure, reflecting on a society’s capitalist present, soviet past, and still deeper Kyrgyz cultural memory in a deceptively simple tale of an old couple finding a baby on their doorstep. Deftly, it depicts the avarice of this generation, which looks at an abandoned infant and sees an opportunity to make money, the state bureaucracy’s regimentation of people’s domestic lives, and, in these contexts, the capacity of the elderly to choose a new path and draw new life from age-old stories.

Both multicharacter narratives centered on vulnerable women, Barren Waters and Walker turn to the long-popular episodic melodramas of Bangladesh and the Philippines, respectively, to depict harsh social realities and women’s plight.

In Barren Waters, a restrictive culture in a disenfranchised community, prejudiced against migrants, transwomen, and the displaced, is unveiled. It combines the familiar song-and-dance interludes with the weepies and theatrical performances, punctuating the plot and providing space for emotional expression.

In Walker, it is police brutality that poor women must suffer that is exposed. Daringly referencing state corruption and inhumanity during the recent Duterte regime, the film unflinchingly uses the idiom of social realism, a political form with a long history in the country, as an artistic protest and means of revelation.

THE DISCIPLINE AND DEMANDS OF THE DOCUMENTARY

Three works illustrate the versatility and intensity of the documentary, each one showing the great lengths documentarists take to accomplish their work and explore new styles.

Nanda School of Tradition combines creative reenactment and daily observation to examine a centenarian guru’s exemplary life. The work, filmed over many years, is, in parts, a lighthearted drama, an existential-religious meditation, and a proud celebration of an exceptional man from the living culture of the filmmaker’s homeplace.

For No Winter Holidays, the filmmakers braved deathly winters. They visited their subjects on and off for months and stayed with them in the deserted Himalayan mountains for over a hundred days, cut off from contact with the outside world. The documentary masterfully portrays nature’s cycles, a village’s customs, and two elderly women’s personal histories and inner lives in affective, ethnographic, and figurative ways. 

In And, Towards Happy Alleys, a young woman—a cinephile and a singer—follows the trail of Iranian artists for years, learning their language and immersing in their culture. She interviews Iran’s leading filmmakers, among others, until her journey becomes a means of self-discovery and lending her voice to the cause of a people oppressed by their government.

URGENT CALLS FOR FREEDOM AND JUSTICE

The profound need for freedom—political, cultural, and personal—expressed as unsung songs, hushed murmurs, and anguished weeping—is the theme that weaves together all the films in the Asia Select category.

Broken Dreams captures these many sentiments and the current travails of different Asian societies and peoples today. Composed of nine short films—some non-narrative experiments, others documentary-like in their treatment, and still others straightforward stories—this omnibus is directed by eight political émigrés and refugees who fled the iron-hand rule of the military junta in Myanmar. Remarkably, despite the dangers to their lives and loved ones, they continue to make films that reveal and record heinous injustices and rally and clamor for freedom.

With screenwriter Ilgar Guliyev from Azerbaijan and filmmaker Modhurima Sinha from India joining me to complete the jury, we awarded the prize on 12 December to Broken Dreams and offered this citation:

“For its daring narratives and poetic visual language, weaving together multiple perspectives of protest against oppression and hope against all odds, produced collectively by freedom-fighting artists in exile despite limitations, restrictions, and threats, using the unique platform of film for social justice, the Asian Select Prize is given by the NETPAC jury in solidarity with Ninefold Mosaic to the omnibus Broken Dreams: Stories from the Myanmar Coup.”

Written by Patrick F. Campos

*A different and shorter version of this was published by The Telegraph India.

Patrick F. Campos is a film critic, programmer, and associate professor at the University of the Philippines. He is a member of NETPAC and FIPRESCI.

A year after the first-decade milestone of the QCinema International Film Festival (QCIFF), it remains the main gateway of Manila audiences to world cinema and the point of convergence in the Philippines for international film artists and professionals.

The 11th edition, dubbed “Elevated,” which ran from 17-26 November 2023 in six venues, showcased ten impressive programs comprising 63 films and four parallel events. The non-screening events included a Project Market where 19 productions from the Philippines and Southeast Asia vied for grants, the launch of a book on Philippine independent cinema, a film industry conference, and the inaugural Young Film Critics Lab dedicated to emerging film journalists.

A still from the movie 'Mimang' directed by Taeyang Kim

DIVERSE PROGRAMS WITH AN ASIAN CINEMA EMPHASIS

QCIFF’s diverse and well-curated programming featured some of the best in contemporary cinema from around the globe but strongly emphasized Asian cinema in the overall selection. The festival opened with Yorgos Lanthimos’s Venice Golden Lion prizewinning period dark comedy Poor Things. It closed in multiple sites with Anthony Chen’s Gen Z existential drama The Breaking Ice, the Singaporean entry for the year’s Oscars, set in the frozen border city between China and North Korea.

The Screen International program featured films by renowned directors whose works are screening in or have been awarded by distinguished film festivals, including Ali Ahmadzadeh, Radu Jude, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Aki Kaurismäki, Wim Wenders, Tran Anh Hung, Christian Petzold, Andrew Haigh, and Ena Sendijarević.

The Before Midnight and Special Screening programs presented works by We Jun Cho, Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping, Junta Yamaguchi, Pascal Plante, Quentin Dupieux, Garth Davis, Gaspar Noé, Moshe Rosenthal, and Wei Shujun, while the Restored Classics section brought back to the big screen a Stanley Kubrick, two Wong Kar-wais, and a Bruce Lee.

Two of QCIFF’s distinctive programs are the New Horizons, which is composed of directorial debuts, and the LGBTQ+ section, RainbowQC. Films by Vuk Langulov -Klotz, Ira Sachs, François Ozon, Michał Englert and Małgorzata Szumowska, and a selection of shorts by Whammy Alcazaren and Pedro Almodóvar were shown in the latter, while the former showcased Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir’s City of Wind (Mongolia), Victor Iriarte’s Foremost by Night (Spain), Charlotte Regan’s Scrapper (UK), Delphine Girard’s Through the Night (Belgium), and Jeremias Nyangoen’s Women from Rote Island (Indonesia).

A HARVEST OF NEW PHILIPPINE FILMS

While QCinema boasts a diverse world cinema selection, it is consistently a platform alongside the Cinemalaya Independent Film Festival for catching the year’s cutting-edge new works from the Philippines and the Philippine diaspora. Three works from different sections illustrate this well.

Emergent Manila-based filmmaker JT Trinidad’s short the river that never ends is a tender look at the life of a middle-aged transwoman struggling to survive with her aged father by the historic Pasig River in a decaying metropolis. 

UK-based British -Filipino Paris Zarcilla’s Raging Grace is a knowingly postcolonial and teasingly allegorical thriller following the horrors faced by an undocumented Filipina immigrant and her daughter in the “haunted” house of a British “master” and his scheming heir. Filipino auteur Lav Diaz returns to the festival with his ongoing response to Duterte’s brutal regime and the Philippine National Police’s complicity in the ex-president’s genocidal “war on drugs” in Essential Truths of The Lake, about a police lieutenant’s obsessive Sisyphean investigation of a desaparecido artist-activist.

QCIFF has also consistently supported Philippine documentaries and short films by simultaneously including them in various programs without setting them apart, maintaining programs specifically for documentaries and shorts, organizing an annual competitive section, and providing grants for their production. In 2023, the support for the Philippine documentary was apparent when the three formally and thematically audacious QCDox selections were screened for free.

Joseph Mangat’s Divine Factory brings viewers to a factory on the outskirts of Manila. In this paradoxical space, members of the LGBTQ+ community lovingly produce religious figurines sold to devotees, many of whom shun them for a twisted understanding and outworking of their religion.

In Nowhere Near, film diarist Miko Revereza examines the formation of his unsettled, alienated self as a once-undocumented immigrant in the US and now itinerant artist through his visits to his native Pangasinan in the Philippines and the familial mythologies and imperial histories that entangle him with this homeplace and continue to influence his striving toward liberation.

Khavn’s National Anarchist: Lino Brocka is a punk tribute to the revered Philippine social realist director, deconstructing fearless Brocka’s themes, imagery, dramaturgy, and soundscapes by reworking the auteur’s surviving films into a seemingly anarchic but meticulously montaged collage film.

Meanwhile, the QCShorts competition premiered six films that received production grants from the festival. These new works by seasoned and debuting filmmakers explore queer issues or employ queering aesthetics, not only in terms of gender representation but also of social, historical, and ecological critique. 

Myra Angeline Soriaso’s A Catholic School Girl is a lesbian coming-of-age story set in Iloilo in a brilliantly designed and photographed convent, by turns comforting as a home and claustrophobic as a cage, about a girl discovering the pang of desire and anguish in the same moment.

Apa Agbayani’s Abutan Man Tayo ng Houselights, on the other hand, penetrates the private world created by and between two aging will-they, won’t-they lovers, each other’s hard-to-kick bad habit, spending a drunken, pulsating, end-of-the-world-like rave night before attempting as the morning light rises to bid farewell and move on, yet again, perhaps finally.

Offering a daring juxtaposition is Lino Balmes’s Microplastics between the trauma of a boy whose yearning for closeness with his father is denied, leading to a series of unfulfilling and aggressive relationships as an adult, and plastic’s insidious and disastrous infiltration of nature, in time destroying everything it penetrates from the inside.

In the tragicomic unraveling of a rural couple’s marriage because of their excessive love for their pets, Aedrian Araojo’s Animal Lovers dissimulates the affliction developing from repressed queer desires when substituted by socially sanctioned but hollow and eventually antagonistic relationships.

The genesis of the Tamblot and Dagohoy revolts waged in Bohol against the Spanish empire is the subject of Roxlee’s characteristically vivacious and rough-hewn worlding, whose historiographic process, creative ritualism, and narrative logic follow no other rules but the artist’s, vividly setting Tamgohoy apart from the polished seriousness of the abovementioned works.

Finally, animator Che Tagyamon returns to QCIFF with Tumatawa, Umiiyak, packing an emotionally complex and broad-ranging social critique in an eight-minute film, combining the bright innocence evoked by doodles and cutouts, the ruing voice of a man grieving the passing of a beloved and the seasons fading in one’s memory, and the images of a decaying city, inhabited by indigents and migrants and neglected and, more recently, violated by state forces.

A still from the movie 'Mimang' directed by Taeyang Kim

A PRODUCTIVE YEAR FOR SOUTHEAST ASIAN CINEMA

Besides heralding the arrival of new Philippine films, QCIFF offers a clear vision of the direction of cinema in Southeast Asia. On its 11^th edition, the festival inaugurated QCSea, a new short film competition for emergent filmmakers from Southeast Asia, a fitting counterpart to both QCShorts and the Asian Next Wave. Out of over 300 submissions, ten eclectic short films competed in its first iteration.

These are Khozy Rizal’s Basri and Salma in a Never- Ending Comedy (Indonesia), a raunchy and irreverent comedy about social mores surrounding sex and child-bearing,; Toan Thanh Doan and Hoang- Phuc Nguyen-Le’s Buoyant (Vietnam), a queer and ebullient fabulist dance film; Sam Manacsa’s noir Cross My Heart and Hope To Die (Philippines), an exploration of the mundane obscurity of death for the rank-and-file; Bea Mariano’s anti-imperial photographic archival experiment, Dominion (Philippines); Stephen Lopez’s dystopian sci-fi cum political allegory, Hito (Philippines); Giselle Lin’s inward-looking personal documentary of trauma and healing, Look into the Mirror and Repeat Myself ( Singapore); Seth Andrew Blanca and Niño Maldecir’s tender comedy Kung nga-a Conscious ang mga Alien sang ila Skincare (Philippines), about the adversity faced by children reared by the LGBTQ+; Moe Myat May Zarchi’s The Altar (Myanmar), a Buddhist meditation about existence and political critique of her country’s oppressive military rule; and Kayla Abuda Galang’s Filipino- American slice-of-life dramedy When You Left Me On That Boulevard (Philippines), about the need to belong in a foreign land.

This year’s Southeast Asian cinema harvest put developments in Malaysian filmmaking in sharp relief, especially revealing considering the censorship its artists continue to face at home. Starting from an ordinary lunch break at a furniture store, Joon Goh’s Mop, from the QCSea Shorts competition, dramatizes power dynamics and the abuse of authority by occasioning for the viewer the virtual embodiment of force and vicarious experience of pain.

We Jun Cho’s Hungry Ghost Diner, from the Before Midnight section, is a joyous and endearing comedy celebrating the poignant aspects of Malaysian culture, including the centrality of food in relationships, running a family-owned restaurant, faith in resplendent ritual and the existence of the supernatural, and desire for familial reconciliation.

THE ASIAN NEXT WAVE

The Asian Next Wave, featuring eight full-length directorial debuts, also included two strong entries from Malaysia.

Tiger Stripes, which won the QCinema Pylon for Best Picture, is Amanda Nell Eu’s exuberant debut, exuding the verve and energy of new cinema, unflinchingly mixing body horror with kampung folklore, and critiquing the patriarchal regimentation of religion to control women’s bodies and identity formation, even from the onset of their puberty.

Another Malaysian triumph, Jin Ong’s Abang Adik, hews closer to the popular episodic melodrama familiar across the region. Still, it breathes new life into the form and, even through its suspenseful and action sequences, unapologetically depicts men weeping and openly invites us to weep with and for them as the film reveals the plight of stateless refugees, who must choose their own family and look after each other in a society where nobody seems to care for them.

The following complete the films from the Asian Next Wave. Thien An Pham’s Inside The Yellow Cocoon Shell (Vietnam) and Nicole Midori Woodford’s Last Shadow at First Light (Singapore) contemplate how death and loss span the gaps between worlds and otherworlds.

Yellow Cocoon is a stunningly photographed, enigmatic road film in the vein of Asian works roughly categorized as “slow films” that dreamily follows the wandering of the bereaved in search for faith from the dense pleasure dens of city alleyways to the open and breathing landscapes of remote provinces.

Last Shadow is likewise a dreamy road movie, accompanying a young woman’s journey to find her mother, from Singapore to Japan, then from bustling Tokyo to the eerily quiet places in the Tōhoku region devastated by the tsunami, and from denial to acceptance. Like Yellow Cocoon, Last Shadow embraces the apparitions from the spirit world that break through the ordinary to imbue humanity’s loneliness in the material world with transcendent meaning.

Patiparn Boontarig’s Solids by The Seashore (Thailand) and Jopy Arnaldo’s Gitling (Philippines) are about crossing cultural borders and, in the process, finding solace in the company of the stranger.

Solids tells of a Bangkokian artist spending time in a southern Thai city to research and produce art concerning the seawalls that have caused environmental havoc and who falls in love with a woman from the Muslim minority population who is already arranged to be married.

While Solids employs the metaphor of art production in critiquing culture and imagining ideal social orders, Gitling utilizes the subtitles and the processes of cultural and linguistic translation between a Japanese artist visiting a southern Philippine city to finish his film, and his translator, who speaks five languages, including an invented one, in dramatizing how human bonds are sealed. From an initial transactional relationship, the two develop an intimate friendship that provides a respite from each one’s worlds and allows them to inhabit a liminal space where they can rethink their lives.

The last two films are from East Asia. Love Is a Gun (Taiwan), the directorial debut of actor Lee Hong-chi, who also stars in and co-wrote the film, is about an ex-convict wanting a fresh start but who finds himself without opportunities, sucked back into the life of syndicate crime.

Finally, Kim Tae-yang’s deceptively simple and anti-romantic but symbolically layered and emotionally subtle Mimang (South Korea) is structured around the act and movement of walking and three chance meetings across a significant period of time. It was filmed over several years, faithfully documenting the physical changes in its lead actors’ demeanor and the capital city of Seoul. The film’s three corresponding episodes meditate on rare chances, what we do in response to them, and how our lives play out based on our choices.

THE YEAR’S NETPAC PRIZE

The NETPAC award at the QCIFF is uniquely considered the festival’s Jury Prize. Moreover, unlike in other festivals, the NETPAC jury is joined by the main jury for the Asian Next Wave in deciding the Jury Prize and vice-versa. In 2023, the jury was composed of the following: Patrick F. Campos (Philippines, NETPAC member), chairperson, Panagiotis Kotzathanasis (Greece, NETPAC member), Anita Lee (Canada), Mark Meily (Philippines), Quark Henares (Philippines)

We met on the 22^nd of November and unanimously decided to award the NETPAC Jury Prize, the following night, on the 23^rd of November, out of the eight entries, to Mimang “for its precisely structured screenplay and corresponding long-durational filming approach that capture the simultaneity and multiple perspectives of regret, nostalgia, yearning, and anticipation paralleling an ever-changing city.”

Photo of Asian Next Wave Jury Members (from left) QCinema International Film Festival Artistic Director Ed Lejano with Jury members Quark Henares, Mark Meily, Panos Kotzathanasis, Anita Lee, and Patrick Campos

Written By   Patrick F. Campos

PATRICK F. CAMPOS is a film scholar, programmer-curator, associate professor at the University of the Philippines Film Institute, and a leading scholar of Philippine and regional cinemas. Author of articles and books on media, art, and cinema, including The End of National Cinema and Scenes Reclaimed, he edits Pelikula: A Journal of Philippine Cinema and Moving Image, curates the annual Tingin Southeast Asian Film Festival in Manila, and co-organizes the biennial and itinerant Association for Southeast Asian Cinemas Conference. He has programmed, juried, or served on the selection committee for Singapore, Guanajuato, and QCinema International Film Festivals, Jogja Asian Film Festival, Asian Film Archive, Image Forum Tokyo, Minikino Bali, Cinemalaya, Cinema One Originals, SeaShorts Malaysia, and Cinema Rehiyon, among others. He is a member of both NETPAC and FIPRESCI.

After a three- year absence, Jio MAMI (Mumbai Academy of Moving Image) 2023 was back in Mumbai in a blaze of glamour, style and drive. The Opening Ceremony (despite its tardy start) at the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre – rated the most technologically advanced theatre in India – boasted opulence and design. Acclaimed actress and Festival Chairperson Priyanka Chopra Jonas moderated the event while other well-known stars (Kareena Kapoor, Sonam Kapoor, Kamal Hassan) had their moments on the stage.

It was an evening full of impassioned speeches and one of awards that had been decided earlier. Veteran Indian filmmaker Mani Ratnam and Italian filmmaker and producer Luca Guadagnino were honoured with Excellence in Cinema Awards, while Aruna Vasudev (Founder of NETPAC) received the Lifetime Achievement Award for her extensive work on Asian cinema, as did Nasreen Munni Kabir and Uma da Cunha – both of who have dedicated their lives to promoting cinema in many different ways.

NETPAC Jury at MAMI, 2023

This 23^rd edition of the festival (it was launched in 1997) returned to Mumbai after a three year gap. And it brimmed with ambition: bringing in new cinematic voices, promoting collaborations and business opportunities and showcasing South Asian Cinema apart from, of course, world cinema. And one cannot miss the fact that three young women were at the helm of this complex operation: Anupama Chopra (Director), Maitreyee Dasgupta (Co-Director) and Deepti D’ Cunha (Artistic Director).

More than 250 films in 70 languages were screened  across the city. The fourteen competing films from South Asia were viewed by a four member jury headed by acclaimed director Mira Nair and other well-known personalities – Edouard Waintrop, David Michod and Isabel Sandoval.  Jio MAMI has made it its goal to become a hub for South Asian and South Asian Diaspora cinema. The non-competition section, too, comprising both features and non-features, had a focus on South Asia.

Enriched with retrospectives, tributes, restored classics, virtual reality screenings, Marathi films (comedy, drama, history, romance, experimental works) and films from around the world, together with a homage to the eminent critic and historian Derek Malcolm who passed away recently,  Jio MAMI fitted the bill of a festival that is rooted as much in the state of Maharashtra and in South Asia, even as it  stretched out  its arms to the world

It was Against The Tide by Sarvnik Kaur (an Indo- French co-production) which walked off with the Golden Gateway Award, a gutsy film about two young fishermen friends who have to face a hostile sea because of climate change and personal challenges. The Silver Gateway went to the Indian film Bahadur – The Brave which dealt with Nepalese migrant workers who want to return to their country during the pandemic. While Agra (yet another Indo- French co-production) about the sexual evolution – even obsession – of a young man living in a crowded tenement.

A still from the film 'Rapture' by Dominic Sangma

The NETPAC Award was won by Rapture by Dominic Sangma. Coproduced by India, China, Netherlands, Qatar and Switzerland, this beautifully shot film is set in the verdant and hilly state of Meghalaya.  In a village peopled by the Garo tribe, Rapture has a variety of interwoven strands that merge nature, faith, corruption,  church, evil spirits,  rumours of strangers entering the village and of kidnapping and trafficking in human organs. The NETPAC jury commended it for “delicately combining the natural and the supernatural worlds inhabited by a community and for evoking the mysterious challenges it must overcome both in itself and beyond.” 

For ten days, Mumbai’s film lovers were treated to an exceptional feast. With the high goals it has set for itself, Jio MAMI has a long road to tread. 

Written by Dr. Latika Padgaonkar

What surprised the most at the ceremony of the opening of the film festival: that the festival is organized exclusively by ladies. Festival director is Anupama Chopra, co-director is Maitreyee Dasgupta, artistic director is Deepti Dcunha. I remember that 20 years ago, when I participated at Third Eye film festival in India, this was also Mumbai film festival where all of the management was male. I remember the program director, Sudhir Nandgaonkar, who organized that film festival within 19 consecutive years. In January 2023, he, unfortunately, passed away. Nevertheless, he has contributed to the development of film festival communities and film clubs movement in India.

​ Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival in its title means: 

Jio – main telecommunications eco-system in India and its creator is Mukesh Ambani, who is not only sponsoring this film festival, but he also built a cultural center, where the opening of the film forum was held. 

MAMI – Mumbai Academy of Moving Images, where film screenings and other events take place year-round. 

Mumbai Film Festival is the biggest South Asian Film Festival that has been held since 1997. 

Our NETPAC jury that consisted of Latika Padgaonkar from India, Nashen Moodley from Australia and myself, we were watching the program that is composed of films from South Asia along with the main competition jury members. South Asia program consisted of 14 movies from India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. A number of films already took part in world known international film festivals such as Venice, Busan, Locarno, Saint Sebastian and Toronto. Five films had a world premiere in Mumbai.

​ Prior to discussion of artistic merits, it is interesting to learn the culture of the regions where those movies were filmed in. I could split those films into four categories: 

1. About rights and freedoms of women - A House Named Shahana (Bangladesh) directed by Leesa Gazi, Shivamma (India) directed by Jaishankar Aryar, A Match (India) directed by Jayant Somalkar, The Sentence (India) directed by Fazil Razak.

2. About a little man– Agra (India) directed by Kanu Behl, Which Color? (India) directed by Shakrukhkhan Chavada, Mithya (India) directed by Sumanth Bhat.

3. About immigrants – Bahadur –The Brave (India) directed by Diwa Shah, Dilli Dark (India) directed by Dibakar Das Roy.

4. About wonderful and mystical events in this world: Guras (India) directed by Saurav Rai, Rapture (India) directed by Dominic Sangma, The Monk and the Gun (Bhutan) directed by Pawo Choyning Dorji, The Red Suitcase (Nepal) directed by Fidel Devkota.

Furthermore,  Against The Tide directed by Sarvnik Kaur deserves a special mention as it is the only documentary film in this competition and because it tells a story of fishermen of Mumbai city. This movie received the main prize - Golden Gateway. As Mira Nair said about this film:  “It is a pleasure to learn that such complex filming-wise movie has been created by a female film director.” Mumbai film festival was held parallel to APSA award ceremony and this film “Against the Tide” has received the award as being «Best Documentary» in Asia Pacific.

Among the films about females as a foreigner, I have been impressed by Indian culture of getting married that is still existing in the villages. In the house of a girl, a potential groom is visiting, along with his father and other male relatives. They are all asking her, the same questions: how old she is, what’s her height, what’s her education level, does she work in the fields and so on. Then they depart, with a promise to return back with an answer. That way in the movie A Match such humiliating way of getting married in a form of interrogation is happening seven times. In the movie, A House Named Shahana - a girl is getting married with the help of Internet, where she is traveling to an unknown Indian man in Great Britain. Two other movies are about elderly women who are having trouble to organize and to live their personal lives. 

Another category that was titled “a little man” - other stories about men or families that don’t fall into place. In the movie Agra that received a special jury prize young, sexually restless man who could build his family life despite his family that didn’t believe he could live normally.  In the movie Which Color? unemployed head of the family,   in the movie Mithya

– story of an adopted teenager, whose real parents passed away. 

It is interesting that the category of films about immigrants is completely different than in Europe. In Europe, we see immigrants that are trying to reach the west. And in this category of South Asian films, we see the stories of people who ended up in India. Undoubtedly Bahadur – The Brave deserves attention, it tells a story about Nepalese immigrants during the pandemic, and their inability to return back home because of the closed borders. This film received Silver Gateway award. Dilli Dark is almost a comedy about an African man who is trying to get going in Delhi.

Overall, the program was interesting and touching upon cultures from different angles. 

However, personally, I enjoyed the fourth category the most as it showed something extraordinary, mystical and spiritual. In the film Guras - a touching story about little girl, who is looking for her dog in the neighboring village, and parallel to her search she is communicating with neighbors and a monk and even with the spirit of a dead ancestor (this film received an award in Karlovy Vary). Nepalese film The Red Suitcase tells a story about the red suitcase and its owner, who is already in the coffin, and it returns back to the outskirts village and on the way, the driver is communicating the entire movie, who is the owner of that red suitcase, who was a business owner of  a road cafe in that same village (was shown in Venice). A film from Bhutan The Monk and the Gun shows of drama of the first democratic elections in the country. Why the gun? Because the monk is trying to bury two guns as a symbol of saying “no to war”. (Film was shown in Toronto, Telluride and at Mumbai, it got an award of the audience). North Indian film Rapture is a story of a small village, for me was as an Indian version of Hundred Years of Loneliness by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. There are so many extraordinary personalities, and the way they lives are intertwined is impressive. Routine and socially difficult life is weaved with magical and extraordinary. And in that small community, there is everything: faith, love, adultery, fear, corruption, death and rapture, spiritual virtues, and most of all formation of a young soul. 

After extensive discussion about following films -  Against the Tide, A Match (this movie already received NETPAC award), Mithya  and  Rapture, we decided to give Rapture our main prize with the following note: “for delicately combining the natural and supranatural worlds inhabited by a community and for evoking the mysterious challenges it must overcome both in itself and beyond.” 

Written by Gulnara Abikeyeva

NETPAC Jury members Dr. Gulnara Abikeyeva, Dr. Latika Padgaonkar, and Nashen Moodley

23^rd Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival NETPAC Jury bios

Dr. Gulnara Abikeyeva

Kazakh film critic and researcher Dr Gulnara Abikeyeva was an artistic director of the Eurasia International Film Festival in Almaty from 2005 to 2013, 2022. She launched the film magazine Asia-kino, served as editor-in-chief of Territoriya Kino, and produced TV programmes about Kazakh cinema. As a member of FIPRESCI and NETPAC, she is a frequent jury member at different international film festivals. She is the author of twelve books about cinema, mostly about Kazakhstan and Central Asian countries. 

Dr. Latika Padgaonkar

Latika Padgaonkar is a columnist, editor, translator, former Joint Director of Osian’s Cinefan Film Festival, and former Executive Editor of Cinemaya, the Asian film quarterly. She was a foreign correspondent for The Telegraph in Paris in the 1980s; she has also worked for UNESCO in New Delhi and for the National Commission for Women’s Media Group. Currently, she is a member of the Media Foundation.

Nashen Moodley

Nashen Moodley is in his twelfth year as Festival Director of Sydney Film Festival. During his tenure, the festival has grown vastly. Moodley’s career in film programming has encompassed many leadership roles, including Manager at the Durban International Film Festival (2001–2011) and Programming Consultant for Dubai International Film Festival (2005–2017). 

A still from the film IF ONLY I COULD HIBERNATE

The 43rd Hawaiʻi International Film Festival (HIFF) took place in Honolulu from October 12 to 22, 2023. 

Recognized as the vanguard forum of international cinematic achievement in the Asia-Pacific region, HIFF 2023 opened with Taika Waititi's comedy feature NEXT GOAL WINS (USA, 2023), along with feature documentary UNCLE BULLY's SURF SKOOL (2023, Hawaiʻi), they served as HIFF 43's two "Opening Night Films." Legendary animator Hayao Miyazaki's new animated feature THE BOY AND THE HERON (2023, Japan) was this year's Closing Night Film. 

Spotlighting exceptional works and discovering new talent, the NETPAC Award at HIFF honors one Asian Pacific title that is the first or second feature from the filmmaker(s). This year, the HIFF NETPAC Jury was composed of Gemma Cubero del Barrio (documentary filmmaker/producer, Talcual Films), Yuka Sakano (Executive Director, Kawakita Memorial Film Institute, Tokyo), and jury chairperson George Chun Han Wang (Professor, ACM: The School of Cinematic Arts, University of Hawaiʻi at Manoa, and NETPAC/USA Treasurer). 

George Chun Han Wang and Gemma Cubero del Barrio announce the NETPAC Award winner at the HIFF 43 Awards Gala on October 22, 2023

On October 17th, a brunch honoring the NETPAC jury was held at the Waihonua Clubroom. The event was hosted by NETPAC/USA president Vilsoni Hereniko and NETPAC Advisory Council member Jeannette Paulson Hereniko, and was attended by filmmakers and festival guests including actress Amy Hill, HIFF Artistic Director Anderson Le, and HIFF Executive Director Beckie Stocchetti. 

The HIFF NETPAC jury reviewed 8 feature films nominated by the festival this year. They are: CORD OF LIFE (China), A GIRL OUT OF THE COUNTRY (Taiwan), MY HEAVENLY CITY (Taiwan), ORPA (Indonesia, Papua), IF ONLY I COULD HIBERNATE (Mongolia), WHICH COLOR? (India), INSIDE THE YELLOW COCOON SHELL (Vietnam), and YOU & ME & ME (Thailand).

At the deliberation meeting that took place at the Halekulani Hotel on October 19 from 9:30 to 11:30am, the NETPAC jury selected IF ONLY I COULD HIBERNATE from Mongolia as this year's NETPAC Award winner at HIFF. An uplifting tale of survival and hope, IF ONLY I COULD HIBERNATE is the feature debut of Mongolian filmmaker Zoljargal Purevdash. Inspired by her own life experience of growing up in the impoverished yurt district in Ulaanbaatar, Purevdash's refreshing coming-of-age tale of a teenage boy’s arduous journey to keep his family warm while pursuing an alternative future through the promises of a better education, is also a gentle but unambiguous criticism of her fast-industrializing homeland's toxic air pollution that is taking a heavy toll on the vulnerable populations simply trying to keep themselves warm in the harsh winter months. 

George Chun Han Wang and Gemma Cubero del Barrio announced the NETPAC Award winner at HIFF 43's Awards Gala, held on Sunday October 22, 2023 at the Halekulani Hotel. IF ONLY I COULD HIBERNATE director Zoljargal Purevdash graciously accepted the award through a pre-recorded video speech. 

Other awards presented at the Gala include: HIFF Halekulani Maverick Award for Korean actor/producer Don Lee; HIFF Halekulani Vanguard Award for Japanese actress Sakura Ando; and HIFF Leanne K. Ferrer Pasifika Trailblazer Award for New Zealand actor Cliff Curtis. As HIFF 43 concluded on the island of Oʻahu, the festival continued through November 5, 2023, with screenings on neighbor Islands including Hawaʻi Island (Big Island), Kauaʻi, Lanai and Maui. 

Vilsoni Hereniko, Gemma Cubero del Barrio, Jeannette Paulson Hereniko, Anderson Le, Beckie Stocchetti, George Chun Han Wang, and Yuko Sakano at the HIFF 43 NETPAC/USA Brunch on October 17, 2023

by
George Chun Han Wang (NETPAC/USA)

Jury Members:

George Chun Han Wang (USA) (Jury Chairperson)

Gemma Cubero del Barrio (USA)

Yuka Sakano (Japan)

NETPAC Award:

IF ONLY I COULD HIBERNATE
(Mongolia, 2023, 96 minutes, Colour)

Directed by Zoljargal Purevdash (Mongolia)

Citation:

"for its insightful and cinematic portrayal of a teenage boy’s arduous journey to keep his family warm, while pursuing an alternative future through the promises of a better education."

Brief Synopsis:

A poor but prideful teenage boy Ulzii determines to win a Physics competition for a scholarship, but his illiterate mother finds a job in the countryside and leaves him with his siblings in the middle of the winter.