The 17th Five Flavours Asian Film Festival, symbolized by the lunar presence of Water Rabbit, will take place between the 15th and 21st of November in Warsaw theaters – Muranów and Kinoteka. The festival will maintain its hybrid form, with the online rendition of Five Flavours lasting until 3rd of December! The event will be produced by a changed team, but remains a platform for the best and most exciting Asian films!
This year's program includes well-known sections. As in previous years, Five Flavours intend to highlight the most beguiling titles from the vast pool of upcoming talent – this is the festival's flag competition section New Asian Cinema where the new voices get the chance to expose their feature films. On the other hand, Asian Cinerama is the showcase of the most electrifying titles from both mainstream and arthouse cinema.
The line-up of the festival shall also include three topical sections, among which you will find a retrospective of a master director and an unprecedented for the festival's history country focus! The idea is to provide a whole spectrum of emotions – from intimate stories to epic ones, from romance and melancholia to a plethora of dreadful experiences.
The Year of Water Rabbit
The lunar patron of the 17th Five Flavours is the Water Rabbit – 2023 is predicted to be the year of hope. Commonly considered the most fortunate of all lunar symbols, Water Rabbit stands as a patron of longevity, peaceful life, patience, and prosperity. It is believed that rabbits bring good energy to building new relationships.
Changes in the festival's team
This is exactly the energy the festival's team needs – Five Flavours is currently undergoing structural changes, the biggest since the launch of the festival. The 17th edition of the event will be conducted without the leadership of Jakub Królikowski, who is the founder and a longstanding director of the Five Flavours. For us – those who decided to stay with the festival – the upcoming edition is a challenge. We decided not to nominate a new leader, but to act as a collective body. This means that Five Flavours won't have its director. We believe that collective efforts shall stand as democratic and effective.
The festival will be different from its previous editions – it's inevitable. We're currently experiencing a scenario, in which the key figure for the Five Flavours' structure is no longer present within the festival's dynamics. What will remain untouched, however, is the festival's vision that was crafted over the years. Five Flavours still aim to represent values that we believe in as a collective; values that we want to represent through our program.
Why have we decided to continue the festival? We believe that Asian Cinema needs its platform in Poland. We're strongly convinced that we haven't shown everything that deserves to be seen by our audiences yet. We're also assured that the audience of Five Flavours is the best audience; that the enthusiasm we're receiving from our viewers will remain, so that we can continue on delivering to you what we find the most interesting in the representation of Asian Cinema.
Stay tuned and see you in November!
