10 Films you shouldn’t miss at the CinemAsia Film Festival 2022

By Asian Film Festival on April 27, 2022 • ( Leave a comment )

These are ten films you shouldn’t miss at the CinemAsia Film Festival which will take place from May 10 – 15, 2022 at Studio/K, Rialto De Pijp, and Rialto Vu in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

– Selected Films –

**Aloners** by Sung-eun Hong – Korea | 2021 – 90 minutes

Jina is the top employee at a credit card company call center. She avoids building close relationships, choosing instead to live and work alone. Her solitary lifestyle is interrupted when her neighbor, who often attempts to strike up conversations with her, dies alone in his apartment. From then on, Jina’s walls slowly start to crumble and she is forced to address the relationships she wanted to ignore: her father’s persistent calls about her mother’s inheritance, an intern whom Jina is assigned to train, and a new neighbor. In Hong Sung-eun’s subtle debut feature, the loneliness of living gradually reveals the fabric of life that invisibly weaves us together. (CinemAsia 2022)

Screening Date:
May 14, 2022 | Saturday | Rialto De Pijp | 21:30 pm

Trailer:

**Ascension** by Jessica Kingdon – USA | 2021 – 97 minutes

Ascension is an impressionistic portrait of China’s industrial supply chain that reveals the country’s growing class divide through staggering observations of labor, consumerism, and wealth. Structured in three parts, the documentary ascends through the levels of the capitalist structure: workers running factory production, the middle class training for and selling to aspirational consumers, and the elites reveling in a new level of hedonistic enjoyment. In traveling up the rungs of China’s social ladder, we see how each level supports and makes possible the next while recognizing that the “Chinese Dream” remains an elusive fantasy for most. (CinemAsia 2022)

Trailer:

**Belle** by Mamoru Hosoda – Japan | 2021 – 122 minutes

Renowned anime director Mamoru Hosoda returns with a reimagining of Beauty and the Beast for the digital landscape. Suzu is a seventeen-year-old high school student living in a rural village with her father. For years, she has only been a shadow of herself. One day, she enters “U,” a virtual world of five billion members on the internet. There, she is not Suzu anymore but Belle, a globally beloved singer. She soon meets a mysterious creature and, together, they embark on an emotional journey in their quest to discover who they truly are. (CinemAsia 2022)

Trailer:

**Missing** by Shinzo Katayama – Japan | 2021 – 124 minutes

Following the death of his wife, Santoshi has sunk into depression and debt, much to the consternation of his daughter, high school student Kaede. To ease their debt, Santoshi tells Kaede he will track down a serial killer and collect the reward, but Santoshi disappears and Kaede must find out what happened to him. What appears to be a familiar mystery narrative takes unexpected turns into the depths of human emotion. Having worked as Bong Joon-ho’s assistant director, Shinzo Katayama has learned the art of crafting suspenseful narratives with complex characters. MISSING, his second feature, is a worthy addition to the canon of East Asian thrillers that have captivated audiences worldwide. (CinemAsia 2022)

Trailer:

**Myanmar Diaries** by The Myanmar Film collective
Myanmar, Netherlands, Norway | 2022 – 70 minutes

On February 1, 2021, a military coup erupted in Myanmar and sparked nationwide protests and civil disobedience. Following the violent repression and imprisonment of thousands of peaceful protesters, there is now growing armed resistance against the junta. Composed of short films by ten young, anonymous Burmese filmmakers, this hybrid documentary moves between mobile phone footage from citizen journalists and fictional stories that speak an urgent truth. At a time when Myanmar has almost disappeared from world news, Myanmar Diaries is a pressing reminder of the repression and resistance that remain an everyday reality. (CinemAsia 2022)

Trailer:

**Taste** by Le bao – Vietnam | 2021 – 97 minutes

Bassley, a Nigerian footballer living in Vietnam, has been unable to make a living since he broke his leg. He and four middle-aged women he sometimes works for decide to escape the disappointment of their daily lives. They go to an old house where they create a special world for themselves, but this intimate utopia cannot last forever. Lê Bảo’s debut feature brings us into a uniquely sensory dreamscape, evocative of the works of Apichatpong Weerasethakul. The grace and poeticism of his camera demand our patience, opening us to a shared moment of fragility with the characters on screen. (CinemAsia 2022)

Trailer:

**Till We Meet Again** by Giddens Ko – Taiwan | 2021 – 128 minutes

From Taiwanese novelist-turned-filmmaker Giddens Ko comes a new fantasy romance that spans the worlds of the living and the dead. When Ah-lun is struck dead by lightning, he goes to the underworld but has no memory of his previous life. He teams up with Pinky and trains to become a God of Love. His job is to bind countless people together with red strings, but he also takes this opportunity to find out what happened to him during his mortal life. One night, Ah-lun’s memories suddenly come flooding back and he’ll have to face his biggest task yet: tie the red string on the love of his life that will separate them forever. (CinemAsia 2022)

Screening Date:
May 14, 2022 | Saturday | Studio/K | 21:15 pm

Trailer:

**Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy** by Ryusuke Hamaguchi – Japan | 2021 – 121 minutes

An unexpected love triangle, a failed seduction, and a chance encounter with the past set the stage for a triptych of stories about women navigating relationships in modern Japan. In one story, a young woman realizes that her best friend’s new flame might be her ex. In another, a disgruntled student plots to use his friend-with-benefits to lure his college professor into a seduction trap. Finally, a woman’s unanticipated run-in with an old friend stirs feelings neither had the chance to properly say. As with the critically acclaimed “Drive My Car”, director Ryusuke Hamaguchi builds scenes with mesmerizing dialogue, weaving a tale as playfully charming as it is deeply human. (CinemAsia 2022)

Trailer:

**Whether The Weather is Fine** by Carlo Francisco Manatad – Philippines, France, Singapore, Indonesia, Germany, Qatar | 2021 – 104 minutes

Determined to flee to the big city after Typhoon Haiyan ravages a coastal town in the Philippines, Miguel searches for his mother Norma and his beloved Andrea before another storm approaches. As the characters struggle with the decision to leave home, the clock keeps ticking on their chance to rebuild a future. Infused throughout the film are surreal moments that bring unexpected levity; mourning families share the frame with children dancing in shabby costumes. Carlo Francisco Manatad’s dreamlike debut feature is a journey through the absurd that never loses touch with the devastating consequences of reality. (CinemAsia 2022)

Screening Date:
May 10, 2022 | Tuesday | Rialto De Pijp | 19:00 pm

Trailer:

**Yuni** by Kamila Andini – Indonesia, Singapore, France, Australia | 2021 – 95 minutes

Yuni is a teenage girl, smart with big dreams of attending university. When two men she barely knows ask to marry her, she rejects their proposals, sparking gossip about a myth that a woman who rejects three proposals will never marry. The pressure mounts when a third man asks for her hand, and Yuni must choose between the myth of a final chance at marriage or her dream of future happiness, in Kamila Andini’s beautiful tale of rebellion and passion in a custom-bound society. (CinemAsia 2022)

Trailer: