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Asian Pop-up Cinema 2025 Edition To Feature First-ever Competitive Section

Festival Runs March 20 - April 13, 2025, Bringing Best of Asian Cinema to Chicago

Asian Pop-Up Cinema announced that the 19th edition of the Festival, unspooling March 20 – April 13, 2025 in Chicago, will feature a juried competition section for the first time in its 10 year history. Packages and individual tickets go on sale February 10, 2025 at www.asianpopupcinema.com.

For the first time in the organization’s history, competition selections will compete for the Grand Jury Feature Film Award in both narrative and documentary categories; the Best Short Film Award in narrative/animated and documentary categories; and the Francis Kwong Memorial Award, recognizing an emerging new director for their first or second feature film. The call for entries is open now, and closes January 22. More information is available online at the entry portal at: https://filmfreeway.com/APUC19-1stJuried

This year’s Asian Pop-Up Cinema Gala, celebrating its 10th anniversary, is set to be held April 5, 2025 at the CineCity Studios (2429 W. 14th St), with special guests and honorees to be announced.

As in past years, the Festival will explore and celebrate cinema from countries across the Asian continent. This year’s program, set to be announced February 24, 2025, will feature work from India, Korea, Japan, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and more, with the majority of presentations being held at the Festival’s hub theater, AMC NEWCITY 14 (1500 N. Clybourn Ave.) in Chicago.

About the author

Panos Kotzathanasis

Panagiotis (Panos) Kotzathanasis is a film critic and reviewer, specialized in Asian Cinema. He is the owner and administrator of Asian Movie Pulse, one of the biggest portals dealing with Asian cinema. He is a frequent writer in Hancinema, Taste of Cinema, and his texts can be found in a number of other publications including SIRP in Estonia, Film.sk in Slovakia, Asian Dialogue in the UK, Cinefil in Japan and Filmbuff in India.

Since 2019, he cooperates with Thessaloniki Cinematheque in Greece, curating various tributes to Asian cinema. He has participated, with video recordings and text, on a number of Asian movie releases, for Spectrum, Dekanalog and Error 4444. He has taken part as an expert on the Erasmus+ program, “Asian Cinema Education”, on the Asian Cinema Education International Journalism and Film Criticism Course.

Apart from a member of FIPRESCI and the Greek Cinema Critics Association, he is also a member of NETPAC, the Hellenic Film Academy and the Online Film Critics Association.

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