New York Asian Film Festival 2019

A First Farewell

This bittersweet narrative-documentary hybrid offers a precious glimpse into China’s Uighur minority through the story of a young boy. Debut director Wang Lina’s charming ode to her own hometown speaks volumes about this marginalized community.

If You Are Happy

Q&A with actress Fu Miao

Through striking mise en scène and a vitriolic script built on cruel twists of fate, Chen Xiaoming’s film about a professor desperate to live in a school district that will guarantee a good education for his daughter, delivers a surprisingly suspenseful critique of modern society.

Jinpa

U.S. Premiere

Dream and reality meld in this stark tale, produced by Wong Kar Wai, in which a stoic truck driver picks up a silver-dagger-wearing hitchhiker in the desolate Kekexili plateau and later goes looking for him, ostensibly to prevent further bloodshed.

Push and Shove

North American Premiere · Q&A with Wu Nan

Well-off screenwriter Yu Feng’s cute little dog is viciously attacked by the hefty Tibetan Mastiff from next door. Perturbed and undeterred by both the police’s apathy and the neighbor’s reluctance to settle the matter properly, Yu Feng and his family embark on a complex war of attrition in a literal dog-eat-dog tale.

The Rib (Director’s Cut)

Q&A with Zhang Wei

This breakthrough film, about a 32-year-old man trying to undergo reassignment surgery, illustrates the intense stigma and obstacles that the LGBT community must face in China, offering an inside look at both the marginalized and those who condemn them.

Savage

Chang Chen plays the courageous cop to Liao Fan’s callous criminal, in a viscerally thrilling showdown between good and evil… and man and blizzard, which unfolds atop Mount Baekdu on the China/North Korea border, as the snowfall of a lifetime rolls in.

Winter After Winter

North American Premiere

During the Japanese occupation of Manchuria circa 1944, an aging father’s attempts to maintain his family line, stopping at nothing to ensure that his daughter-in-law produces a male heir. This sets the stage for an elaborate plot of subterfuge, encapsulating the struggle to persevere against oppression

White Snake

North American Premiere

A young woman who has lost her memory is helped by a snake catcher. In their quest to find her identity, they gradually develop feelings for each other, but just as the truth comes close, disaster looms... Embarking on a journey into the fantasy world of wuxia romance, the huge box-office success White Snake surely sets a new golden age for animated Chinese cinema.

Wushu Orphan

North American Premiere · Q&A with Huang Huang

Wet-behind-the-ears Lu Youhong takes a job teaching Chinese at a remote martial-arts academy, where he meets Zhang Cuishan, the only student who cares about academics. Huang Huang’s film is a beautifully poetic paean to the bittersweet pangs of growing up at any age.

The Attorney

International Premiere

Alex Fong shines as a lawyer who agrees to take the case of a young man accused of killing the daughter of Hong Kong’s richest tycoon and in the process unearths a conspiracy that may not only expose the truth behind the crime but also unravel a web of corruption.

The Fatal Raid

North American Premiere • Q&A with actors Jade Leung and Michael Tong

With bad-ass modern women warriors at the forefront, director Jacky Lee effortlessly exudes the hyperbolic stylings of classic Hong Kong action, bringing back the irrepressible "girls with guns" subgenre with full bombastic force.

G Affairs

North American Premiere · Q&A with Lee Cheuk Pan and actress Hanna Chan

An intertwining menagerie of odd souls, including a bad cop and his teenage daughter, their lovers, a cellist, and an autistic man, reflect the darker chasms of Hong Kong society in Lee Cheuk-pan’s bold and shocking debut.

Iron Monkey

Yuen Woo-ping outdid himself with taut direction and revolutionary fight choreography for this classic from the early ’90s “New Wave” of old-school kung-fu films, featuring Donnie Yen as a man who is first mistaken for, then sent to track down and fight, the Robin Hood–style hero known as the Iron Monkey.

Master Z: The Ip Man Legacy

Q&A with Yuen Woo-ping, who will also receive the Star Asia Lifetime Achievement Award

Legendary action director Yuen Woo-Ping’s star-studded addition to the Ip Man universe centers on Cheung Tin Chi (Max Zhang), who after being defeated by Mater Ip tries to make an honest life with his young son in Hong Kong—but it’s not long before a mix of foreigners, money, and triad leaders draw him once again to the fight.

The Miracle Fighters

Introduction by Yuen Woo-ping

Kung-fu comedy master Yuen Woo-ping started added fantasy elements to the mix with this absolutely batshit-crazy cult classic. The wild and loose plot involves a Qing dynasty official in conflict with the emperor, resulting in the deaths of both his wife and the prince—and nonstop martial-arts zaniness.

Missbehavior

Singular auteur Pang Ho-cheung strikes again with his brilliant combination of uproarious lowbrow gags and insightful humanism, for this freewheeling tale that’s both a wild comedy built around a desperate scavenger hunt for breast milk and a look at the profundity of true friendship

See You Tomorrow

North American Premiere

This unrepentant cinematic celebration of bar culture and the emotional wreckage that goes with it plays like a drunk version of Wong Kar Wai’s classics, but set in his birthplace of Shanghai, instead of Hong Kong. A stunningly bizarre journey that defies meaning, where lost souls never quite find themselves or each other.

The Fable

Centerpiece Selection · North American Premiere · Q&A with Kan Eguchi

An unequaled yakuza hit man known as The Fable is ordered to lay low and live a “normal life,” but while undercover is forced into action to protect a woman, in this picture-perfect antihero-comedy manga adaptation.

Complicity

As a Chinese man working illegally in Japan acclimates to his new life with a new identity, he forms a strong bond with his mentor, while a quiet romance develops with a local woman. However, the threat of deportation always lurks around the corner...

Dare to Stop Us

Kazuya Shiraishi, who cut his teeth making exploitation pictures at Wakamatsu Productions, has now directed this rambunctious, fact-based account of one young dreamer who joins Wakamatsu in 1969 to make pinku eiga, struggling to fit into the testosterone-heavy “family” and find her own voice.

The Gun

North American Premiere

Adapted from a prizewinning novel, this noir-tinged tale stars Nijiro Murakami as an aimless college student who stumbles upon the aftermath of a murder scene one night, and without thinking, grabs the titular weapon and keeps it safely hidden away at home. When a detective turns up at his apartment, a dangerous cat-and-mouse game ensues.

Hard-Core

North American Premiere

Nobuhiro Yamashita’s first sci-fi-inflected outing about sad-sack Ukon and his only friend, Ushiyama, a kindhearted oddball, who revive a rusty old robot, is also a mirthful drama about loneliness, male bonding, female lust, and doing the right thing.

Jam

North American Premiere · Q&A with SABU

Cult director SABU’s latest feature is an absurdist dramedy driven by random chance and fateful encounters, as three disparate characters inch closer to crossing paths.

Lying to Mom

North American Premiere · Q&A with Katsumi Nojiri

When a doting mother learns that her son has killed himself, the shock is so great she loses consciousness and her memory of that day. Worried that the truth might prompt a relapse, her husband and daughter lie to her—and the fabrications just keep snowballing... until the family begins imploding with unspoken secrets.

Mr. Long

Q&A with SABU

When a job goes wrong in Tokyo, a legendary hit man takes refuge in a rundown neighborhood and is soon putting his knife to use cutting up food rather than people. But the mob is never far behind in this hitting actioner and self-actualization tale that masterfully combines punishing violence with poignant humanity.

Samurai Marathon

Opening Night · North American Premiere · Q&A with Bernard Rose and Nana Komatsu

British director Bernard Rose brings 1850s Japanese history to exhilarating life with this lavish jidaigeki, in which a feudal lord prepares his samurai troops for the onslaught of modernization by having them compete in a marathon—which his independent-minded daughter secretly joins in on.

Walk with Me

North American Premiere

Melding tragic melodrama with startling supernatural and psychological elements, this dynamic Malaysian horror film starts as a story of a bullied young female factory worker and gradually escalates into a feverish nightmare involving an evil boss, an abusive father, a sibling’s mysterious death, creepy dolls, and ghost children.

MA

North American Premiere

Two tragic stories of motherhood converge in Kenneth Lim Dagatan’s chilling feature debut, a phantasmagorically macabre tale of loss, sacrifice, and evil.

Signal Rock

North American Premiere

What starts as a small slice of island life expands into a moving depiction of perseverance as Intoy works to help his sister win custody of her daughter from her abusive husband in a place where the only hope for women is to work in a bar or marry a rich foreigner.

Another Child

North American Premiere · Q&A with Kim Yoon-seok

In actor extraordinaire Kim Yoon-seok’s riveting directorial debut about family dysfunction, amour fou, and coming-of-age under the oddest of circumstances, a teenage girl discovers that her father is having an affair with a classmate’s mother.

Dark Figure of Crime

A psychological game of cat and mouse plays out between a purported murderer and an agitated policeman in this fascinating police procedural, inspired by true events, that explores the dark side of human nature.

Kokdu: A Story of Guardian Angels

U.S. Premiere

The event features live traditional accompaniment performed by a 20-member ensemble from the National Gugak Center, the representative headquarters of Korean traditional performing arts, who will be playing the score for the first time in the US.

Money

Q&A with Park Noo-ri and actor Ryu Jun-yeol, who will receive the Screen International Rising Star Asia Award

Built around a devious scheme that serves as an indictment of avarice and materialism, the thrilling Money features rising star Ryu Jeon-yeol as a young aspiring stockbroker reaching for the golden ring, only to be shoved off his horse by an unscrupulous sociopath (Yoo Ji-tae, Oldboy).

Move the Grave

International Premiere

In this candid critique of modern society as funny as it is cruel, four bickering sisters and one nightmarish problem child take a road trip from hell after learning they have to move their father’s grave due to construction.

The Odd Family: Zombie on Sale

North American Premiere

When the opportunistic Park family patriarch regains youthful vitality after a zombie bite, the get-rich-quick light bulbs go off. As the plague spreads, the more than eccentric Parks rely on outrageous feats of ingenuity to conquer the undead in hopes of turning a profit in Lee Min-jae’s action-packed and self-referential directorial debut.

A Resistance

North American Premiere

In 1919, 17-year-old schoolgirl Yu Gwan-sun is thrown in jail. But Yu isn’t just any girl; she’s a fierce, independence fighter and a leading figure of the March 1st Independence Movement. This is the story of her captivity in Seodaemun Prison in Japan-ruled Seoul, where she inspires the female inmates of Prison Cell #8 never to lose hope.

Sub-Zero Wind

North American Premiere

Kim Yuri’s ambitious and incredibly moving feature debut follows two girls’ tumultuous lives from ages 12 to 19: Young-ha, whose father abandons her, and Mi-jin, her cousin and best friend. The two form an inseparable bond as they navigate the challenges of growing up with less-than-reliable adults as their caregivers.

Han Dan

North American Premiere · Q&A with Huang Chao-liang

Set against the tradition where men seek atonement by submitting themselves to ritualized firecracker attacks (as effigies of the deity Han Dan), this eye-opening moral tale about an upstanding young man who commits a reckless act that ends in life-changing tragedy not only reveals unique aspects of Taiwanese culture but its complex psyche as well.

It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Show

North American Premiere

The unscrupulous owner of Crazy TV sets out to lower the channel’s ratings; viewership surprisingly grows, but he has something else up his sleeve. And then things get really crazy in this madcap farce, a glorious tribute to the spirit of creativity.

The Scoundrels

A former basketball star barely getting by working shady part-time jobs falls into a downward spiral of crime, treachery, and violence after he is hijacked and framed for robbery in this taut, action-packed thriller.

Song Lang

Q&A with Leon Le

In this mesmerizing, beautifully performed musical melodramas set in 1980s Saigon, the paths of a gangster and as singer cross, and they gradually discover they are kindred spirits.

Masterclass with Yuen Woo-ping

Free and open to the public! · Presented by HBO®

Hong Kong action choreographer and director extraordinaire Yuen Woo-ping, perhaps best known to Western audiences for his work on The Matrix; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; and Kill Bill, will discuss his art and career in Asia and America. The recipient of this year’s Star Asia Lifetime Achievement Award, he is also the subject of a tribute, with three of his films screening at the festival.

The Terror: Infamy

World Premiere

The haunting second season of the horror-infused anthology centers on a series of bizarre deaths that haunt a Japanese-American community during World War II. Starring Derek Mio, Kiki Sukezane, Shingo Usami, and the renowned George Takei.