Asian Films Screening at the 53rd edition of International Film Festival Rotterdam

Tiger Competition

Kiss Wagon

Midhun Murali
173′ | India | 2024 | World Premiere

In the realm of Mountland, Ms. Isla maintains control through a labyrinthine parcel service system. It’s the only form of order in this chaotic world. As the Atqaba religious festival nears, Ms. Isla is entrusted with the delivery of an unconventional package from an important figure, and its destination is anything but usual. It’s a mission even she feels unsettled by, but her reputation is everything, so she sets off on the perilous journey.

Rei

Tanaka Toshihiko
189′ | Japan | 2024 | World Premiere

The title of Tanaka Toshihiko’s ambitious exploration of human relationships is polysemous. A genderless given name, the kanji character can similarly represent a variety of meanings. As such, it’s the perfect symbol for this portrait of early thirtysomething company employee Matsushita Hikari. Her life is stable and seemingly without worry, unlike many of those around her. But it’s through their struggles that they find their counterparts in life – the balance in relationships that steadies them. Hikari lacks this ballast and this begins to worry her. However, on a trip into the mountains of Hokkaido she encounters a Deaf landscape photographer, Masato. Through him Hikari embarks on a journey that will transform her sense of being and connectedness with the world.

She Fell to Earth

Susie Au
92′ | Hong Kong | 2024 | World Premiere

Rocks are people too. At least, that’s the basis of Susie Au’s deliciously offbeat sophomore feature, whose rainbow palette is one of the film’s many treats. A celestial body makes its way through the Earth’s atmosphere, transforming into a young woman on impact. But with that change goes all memory of what she was before, leaving her in a strange present, with an uncertain future. She keenly observes human lives, gaining insights into beings like herself, which includes Zheng Zhe, who believes that every object has a unique sound. If that’s true, what sound does she project into the universe?

Tiger Short Competition

Break no.1 & Break no.2

Lei Lei
18′ | China | 2024 | World Premiere

After “A Bright Summer Diary” (IFFR 2020) and “Ningdu” (IFFR 2022) we once again welcome Lei Lei to Rotterdam with this compelling tribute to bygone images and memories. As always, the mundane comes alive through a conscientious montage of gorgeous compositions. A two-part quest for what has been lost through time, “Break no.1 & Break no.2” fires the imagination.

Crazy Lotus

Naween Noppakun
15′ | Thailand | 2024 | World Premiere

Strange things seem to be happening to the citizens chasing Good Seconds along the riverbank, as they are wandering around between infinite possibilities. The newly released Distant Heart Glasses they wear offer them an escape from reality which is as tempting as it is daunting. In a world where the lines between our urban spaces and our digital environment are continuously blurring, what is the best possible path forward, if there still is one?

Void

Iwasaki Yusuke
24′ | Japan | 2024 | World Premiere

Asagi’s classmates don’t seem concerned when her friend Satake suddenly dies in a strange way: they just continue their conversations about food and karaoke. While Asagi struggles with her loss, everything around her becomes increasingly absurd. A promising, idiosyncratic psychological horror debut with a generous dollop of dark humour and an eerie atmosphere.

Big Screen Competition

Yohanna

Razka Robby Ertanto
85′ | Indonesia | 2024 | World Premiere

Razka Robby Ertanto’s latest feature, like his previous “Cross the Line” (2022), grapples with illicit aspects of the labour market in Indonesia. But whereas the earlier film dealt with the problems faced by migrant workers, “Yohanna” is a nerve-wrecking thriller that looks at the all-too-common exploitation of young children as part of a workforce. The situation is seen through the eyes of the titular character, a young nun whose faith is wavering. When the car she uses to deliver humanitarian aid disappears, her search draws her into the shady world of children forced to work long hours and in harsh, sometimes even dangerous, conditions.

Seven Seas Seven Hills 

Ram
135′ | India | 2024 | World Premiere

Set on a moving train on a rain-soaked night, a chance encounter between a 32-year-old everyman and an 8,000-year-old immortal – and a rat!– triggers a series of events that will intertwine their destinies. Amidst moral dilemmas and unexpected compassion, the ordinary man grapples with survival while the immortal – played with no small amount of relish by the charismatic Nivin Pauly – seeks to heal centuries-old wounds. Tamil filmmaker Ram’s fifth feature is a cinematic mediation on Tamil philosophy, whilst simultaneously offering an exploration of love, pain, suffering, compassion and redemption – what might surprise anyone familiar with Ram’s previous work is how markedly different, in tone, style and scale “Seven Seas Seven Hills” is.

Tenement

Inrasothythep Neth, Sokyou Chea
88′ | Cambodia | 2024 | World Premiere

Following her mother’s death, manga artist Soriya travels to her ancestral home in Phnom Penh, with hopes of reconnecting with her distant family and using the visit as inspiration for her work. All goes well initially. Renting an apartment in Metta, a rundown Khmer Rouge-era housing complex, her visit to her maternal relatives finds her welcomed with open arms. But Soriya’s waking hours in the apartment and its surroundings are punctuated by terrifying, bloody visions, almost as though she were a conduit for horrors of the past wanting to seep into the present.

Focus: Scud

Amphetamine 

Scud
97′ | Hong Kong | 2009 | Dutch Premiere

Kafka is a fitness trainer, martial artist and delivery boy working multiple jobs to take care of his mother. His life has never been one where everything neatly falls into place: his father died by suicide when Kafka was young, and most recently, he broke up with his girlfriend. But perhaps meeting the charming young executive Daniel will be the lucky charm that turns the tables.

Apostles 

Scud
82′ | Hong Kong | 2022 | Dutch Premiere

Once again drawing from a very personal place, Scud’s eighth film “Apostles” does away with a certain kind of nostalgia. As in “Voyage” (2012), “Utopians” (2016) and “Thirty Years of Adonis” (2017), Apostles reaches into the deep and dark crevices of the human mind to reflect on the meaning and value of life by exploring death and what comes after. Claiming to be an apostle of Socrates and Plato, a scholar forms a cult-like circuit of twelve beautiful young men in a secluded estate to pursue this quandary.

Bodyshop 

Scud
89′ | Hong Kong | 2022

The horny ghost of a young man traverses the globe, stalking and debating with his past lovers.

City Without Baseball 

Scud, Lawrence Lau Kwok-Cheong
100′ | Hong Kong | 2007 | Dutch Premiere

Sexuality, suppressed emotion and urban alienation occupy the minds of the Hong Kong baseball team, searching for their place in a city where baseball culture is non-existent. Who are these invisible players if no one is cheering them on?

Love Actually… Sucks! 

Scud
83′ | Hong Kong | 2010 | Dutch Premiere

Even if in “Love Actually… Sucks!” Scud interlaces stories of love and relationships, it becomes immediately apparent that this film bears no easy relationship to Richard Curtis’ 2003 film. As is made clear by the lashings of nudity and sex and a guy wandering along the coast, carrying his lover’s decapitated head. Inspired by six real-life court cases in Hong Kong, the film is a unique existential romance about love that has gone bad, illustrating how love can kind of suck, whilst giving a toast to unconventional love too.

Naked Nations – Tribe Hong Kong 

Scud
161′ | Hong Kong | 2024 | World Premiere

Produced over the past three or so years, “Naked Nations” functions as a drama, a making-of, a documentary and an act of defiance. It is a film about people who have lost and re-found hope, and those who managed to always hold on to it. Scud invites his collaborators from previous films, states his case and faces the final curtain, and this time he’s the one stripping down, confirming once and for all that this attitude was never merely pretence.

Permanent Residence 

Scud
115′ | Hong Kong | 2008 | Dutch Premiere

Ivan meets Windson at the gym, a man so beautiful and athletic he must be a fantasy. They strike a queer friendship, spending their time together, sparring, travelling, going to beaches and having all sorts of manly fun wearing nothing but Adam’s robes. There is only one catch. Windson is straight and draws a strict boundary when it comes to sex, and so Ivan’s odyssey begins.

Thirty Years of Adonis 

Scud
86′ | Hong Kong | 2017 | Dutch Premiere

Adonis, a young actor at the Beijing Opera dreaming of stardom and a love that transcends the oceans of time, leaves everything behind and exposes himself to a whole new experience. In his late twenties, he yearns to explore new meaning in his life and ends up in the world of the male sex industry. And so he surrenders himself, to daydreams and nightmares alike.

Utopians 

Scud
87′ | Hong Kong | 2016 | Dutch Premiere

Love and Death meet again in Utopians. Hins, a dreamy student with a passion for literature and a thirst for a deeper understanding of life finds himself overwhelmed by Antonio and Swan, a charismatic teacher and his elegant assistant. Charmed by their love for art and wisdom, Hins plunges into the uncharted waters of spiritual learning and the pleasures of the flesh, taking his religious girlfriend Joey along for the ride.

Voyage 

Scud
100′ | Hong Kong | 2012 | Dutch Premiere

A psychiatrist debating the link between his choice of profession and his mental state, gets on his boat and embarks on a voyage. Grappling with his own depression, he revisits encounters with former patients. His attempt at self-therapy becomes an anthology of short stories, where Yuan (exiled to Inner Mongolia under Mao’s Chinese re-education policy), Ming (a young man with disabilities), Leni (a German columnist coping with the death of her mother) and Sebastian (an artist romantically involved with a young woman in the Netherlands) become the characters.