The fifth edition of EstAsia, a film festival in Reggio Emilia, Italy, dedicated to Asian culture, will begin on June 14, after a year of break due to the covid-19 epidemic.
The series of screenings aims to address, from a different angle, the current problems linked to interculturality and integration. Not a festival aimed only at the fanbase and the professionals therefore, but a moment of involvement and dialogue with the foreign communities present in the provincial and regional area.
The Golden Kaiju, a prize created by the artist Hu-Be, will be assigned this year by a jury composed of Nicola Cupperi (film critic), Lara Ferrari (journalist) and Xu Ying (communication professor at Renmin University in Beijing and Chinese director of the Confucius Institute of the University of Bologna). Then there will be the Audience Award and the Youth Award, allocated by a jury made up of students from the Ariosto Spallanzani High School.
The selection will give the opportunity to see previews and films that are otherwise difficult to find in Italy and tell stories of worlds culturally distant from ours, thus offering various insights into the relations between East and West. This year the festival will be held in three different locations and over two weeks, due to the strict rules of admission, for covid-19.
The festival will start on 14 and 15 June with the screening of two timeless classics:
Fruit Chan's “Made in Hong Kong“, best film at the Hong Kong Film Awards 1998
and
“Join t Security Area“, the film launched by Korean director Park Chan-wook
In the following days:
“Peninsula” by Yeon Sang-ho, the highly anticipated sequel of the zombie film “Train to Busan”.
“Better Days” by Eric Tsang, a romantic epic about a teenage girl victim of bullying, considered by many to be the best film of 2020, winner of numerous international awards and nominated for an Oscar as Best International Film.
“Dance with me” by Shinobu Yaguchi, a crackling Japanese musical winner of the Audience Award at the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal.
“Chola” by Sanal Kumar Sasidharan
“Jallikattu” by Lijo Jose Pellissery
“The Gun” by Masaharu Take
“Siblings of The Cape” by Shinzo Katayama
“Heavy Craving” by Pei-Ju Hsieh
“Best Director” byZhang Xia
“Shanghai Swings” by Yang Mingteng
“Taro The Fool” by Tatsushi Omori
The usual space for co-productions between East and West will feature:
“Aga “, a touching film by Bulgarian director Milko Lazarov that takes us among the Russian Eskimos of the snowy expanses of Jacuzia
and
” Ohong Village” by Lungyin Lim, a Taiwan / Czech Republic co-production on the issue of generational conflict and between tradition and innovation.
There will also be a small focus on Kazakh director Adilkhan Yerzhanov, who is establishing himself as one of the most interesting voices in the new auteur cinema, with :
“A dark dark man“, rural noir with rarefied atmospheres
and
“Atbai's fight“, a story of sport as an opportunity for redemption.
Finally, on Sunday 27 June
8.40 pm – AWARD CEREMONY OF THE WINNING FILMS.
“John Denver Trending” by Arden Rod Condez, which explores the issues of bullying
For more info please check the Official Website of Estasia
