Created in 1995, FICA is the oldest European Asian Film Festival and the sole European Film Festival to focus on entire Asian Continent from the Suez Canal to the Pacific Ocean, from the Indian Ocean to the Arctic Ocean. The 22nd edition gathered more than 30.000 audience members for the most important European focus on Asian independent and arthouse movies.
During our 23rd edition from February 07th-14th, the Festival features over 90 movies, many rarely-seen, others never-been-released before, enhancing our duty of discovering, defending, promoting and even remembering cinematographic masterpieces.
Following sections for this year’s Film Festival:
* Contemporary Asian Cinema:
Competition of unreleased feature films in France
Competition of unreleased documentaries in France
Premiere Screening
* Main Topic: Asian Country Sides
* Oishii! Japanese Culinary Arts Movies
* Masters of Sri Lanka Cinema
* Focus on Georgian Cinema
* Japanimation – Young Audience
Official Competition: Fiction Features
For the second year in a row, VIFF of Asian Cinema has received more than 700 long features produced in 2016, compared to 500 reviewed titles two years ago. Out of the over 700 features, we only selected 9 titles, thus taking a huge responsibility to select final line-up. The selection is made after many meetings, many encounters, many screenings, many written notes and many trips around the world to bring you the finest selection to satisfy both our jury members and our audiences:
China: 500M 800Mby Yao Tian – 2016 – French Premiere
India: Hotel Salvationby Shubhashish Bhutiani – 2016 – French Premiere
Indonesia: Emma (Mother) by Riri Riza – 2016 – French Premiere
Iran: Being Bornby Mohsen Abdolvahab – 2016 – French Premiere
Iraq: The Dark Windby Hussein Hassan – 2016 – French Premiere
Japan: Her Motherby Sato Yoshinori – 2016 – French Premiere
Japan: Going the Distanceby Yujiro Harumoto – 2016 – French Premiere
South Korea: Baby Beside Meby Son Tae-gyum – 2016 – European Premiere
Taiwan: Lost Daugtherby Chen Yu-jie – 2016 – European Premiere
Official Competition: Documentary Feature
For this selection, our festival programmers try to imagine a dialog between East & West. That’s part of the reason why some of our choices imply documentaries done by Westerners about Asia or about Asian directors. Those movies summon the audiences to a very special journey. Those are snapshots from different parts of the world at one given moment. They want to invite our audience to reflect both on their own situation and to use them as references in this ever-changing world:
Canada-Cambodia: The Man who Built Cambodiaby Christopher Rompré – Unreleased
China-France: China, In the Mood for Lifeby Marjolaine Grappe
South Korea: Mrs. B, a North-Korean Womanby Jero Yun- Premiere Screening
Georgia: Pirimzeby Sophia Tabatadze – French Premiere
India: An Intouchable among the Dead by Asil Rais
Kyrgyzstan: Thank You, Doctorby Adilet Kharzoev – Unreleased
France-Philippines: Miss Philippinesby Gaëlle Lefeuvre – Unreleased
Vietnam: So Close so Far the Ancestral Forestsby Doan Hong Le – French Premiere
