The ninth edition of Across Asia Film Festival, the international film festival focused on the independent languages of contemporary Asian cinema, will be staged from 7 to 11 December 2022 in Cagliari. With a careful selection of over 20 unpublished films from all over the Asian continent, including various Italian and European premieres, the event offers five days of screenings and meetings in various locations in the Sardinian capital city, Cagliari.
Across Asia Film Festival renews its format this year by proposing a wide-ranging program that abandons the previous focus dedicated to a single country or geographical area to embrace the entire Asian continent. Particular attention is directed towards independent and emerging productions, female cinema, young people, the destruction of genres, pop, the queer and politically incorrect universe that rotates on different proprietary axes in each country.
About the Programme
Among the women's productions presented at this edition of Across Asia Film Festival is Yuni, a film directed by Indonesian Kamila Andini and awarded at the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival which tells the story of the cultural taboos and restrictions suffered by women in the largest Muslim country of the world through the eyes of a teenager full of plans for the future.
Among the productions of a political and social nature there is Autobiography, the first and mature work of the Indonesian director Makbul Mubarak which deals with the banality of violence and the sadism of psychological addictions in the wake of dictatorships, the award-winning Myanmar Diaries, signed in a collective name, which tells from the inside the military coup of February 2021 between documentary and autofiction and A Night of Knowing Nothing by Indian director Payal Kapadia which documents the revolts of students against the caste system using found footage and a structure that caresses narrative fiction.
There will also be bizarre incursions of surrealistic cinema with the allegorical thriller House of Time by Indian directors Rajdeep Paul and Sarmistha Maiti and with the Malaysian revenge-movie Stone Turtle directed by Ming Jin Woo, an emotional journey towards the unexpected that sinks its roots in folklore, between chthonic forces and magical landscapes. Hip-Hop, science fiction and manga are, on the other hand, the languages that the Japanese Hoya Seiyo blends in his delirious first work Alien Artist.
Covid and the related feeling of paranoia are the themes addressed by the Indian master of the no-budget documentary Don Palathara in the film Everything is Cinema, which chronicles the process of creating a documentary. There will also be a tribute to the very young Korean author Park Syeyoung, awarded as best science fiction director at the BIFAN, with screenings of his first feature film entitled The Fifth Thoracic Vertebra – a horror-esque production that winks at Lynch, Cronenberg and Dupieux – and his works Cashbag and Luxury Staycation.
Moreover, raw cruising in the woods among the homeless, prostitutes and unemployed miners in The Men Who Wait by the Vietnamese Truong Minh Quý, cannibalism and jet-set in Swallow by the Japanese Mai Nakanishi, meta-cinema and Pre-Raphaelite reminiscences in At Kinosaki by Shingo Ota and space for animation cinema with Perfect City: The Mother by Shengwei Zhou and The Magical Tracing by Wu De-Chuen.
Among the collateral events of the festival, the soundtrack of Yukoku (Patriotism) by Yukio Mishima, the first and only direction of the great Japanese intellectual and scholar, by the musician Daniele Ledda; a presentation of the book Whispering Catastrophe by the artist Jacopo Miliani and Sara Giannini, a research related to male gay eroticism in Japan and its representation, and the Sri Lankan choreographer and artist Sara Mikolai, of Tamil origins, who presents a performance and a masterclass in which the language of traditional dances becomes a moment of mystery, generative of new imaginaries.
Under the artistic direction of Stefano Galanti and Maria Paola Zedda, Across Asia Film Festival is a project of ZEIT – Art Research – a cultural association dedicated to the promotion of art, performance and cinematography.
