You are a Stranger to me

The tenth edition of the AFFBCN arrives this fall with a program that aims to be as representative as possible of the most recent experimental and independent cinema on the Asian continent, without excluding productions that respond both to the interest of a public that knows films from Asia, as well as from those who want to begin to know what a not-so-new cinema transmits to us, whose diversity responds preferably to the different narratives it exposes. The exoticism that the West has traditionally attributed to these productions has been replaced by the contribution that the latter have made and continue to make to culturally construct an identity that is inseparable from belonging to the territory.

In this and other cases, cinema unites the concepts of nation and narration, two words whose signifiers in postcolonial studies relate the right to self-government and the right to speech. When a nation narrates itself, it rejects subalternity as a condition of its existence. Homi K. Bhabha, a professor of Indian origin at Harvard University and one of the most widely recognized theorists of postcolonial studies today, understands the nation as a laboratory of cultural differences that mutate with cultural migrations, social conflicts and tension between hegemonic languages and ethnic minorities. In the panorama that Asian cinema offers us every year, we can explore these differences through their particular narratives and the scope of the transformations that take place in the societies from which they come.

You are a stranger to me is a phrase that expresses distance and division between me and you, between us and them, and is pronounced when we perceive otherness in the Other and in ourselves. The stranger is a foreigner who challenges us and whose supposed condition does not, however, make him more alien, but on the contrary. The supposed implicit accusation when saying you are a stranger to me is in turn equivalent to a rejection and, contradictorily, to an interest in knowing more about this other, who is a personal and generic You, and about oneself. Cinema brings us closer to the stranger and the foreigner, who invades our home and at the same time claims a place in our lives, through the stories it tells us. This festival focused on Asian cinemas wants to contribute to the presentation and dissemination of individual and collective narratives, despite being part of a global world, whose cultural differences refuse to disappear.

As in previous editions, on the tenth anniversary of the AFFBCN, more than a hundred films from more than twenty-five countries will be presented, highlighting some cinematographies as usual, but without stopping screening titles that come from other less recognized countries. One of the objectives of the festival is to explore this stranger or foreigner that the cinema shows us and stimulate interest in discovery. Hence, in some cases, the programming aims to be rather inclusive, not so much with the intention of covering more titles each year, as to show not only those whose authors do not go unnoticed because they have their followers, but also those less known or whose references force us to investigate their respective contextualization, discovery and conquest.

The consolidation of the AFFBCN has been made possible thanks to the trust placed in the festival by filmmakers, distributors and audiences. But, above all, for the recognition it has achieved over time, thanks also to the work of the Casa Asia team and the institutions and companies that have supported this event year after year, which tries to promote the integration of this stranger who lives with us. outside and inside the city where we live, and even in ourselves. In this case, the condition of stranger and foreigner is associated with that of the guest who comes from elsewhere and whose cultural identity is inseparable from the territory to which he belongs. We are all strangers insofar as we are perceived from otherness. Cinema, like literature, explores this subject that at the same time brings us closer and makes us feel similar, contributing to dissolve geographical distances and favour tolerance as well as cultural integration.

The antecedents of the AFFBCN date back to the creation of Casa Asia, where from the beginning, cinema programming was strategically decisive in disseminating information about a little-known continent and that the media began to point out in many cases for the role they would play in a future in global politics and economics. A future that for two decades is already a continuous present. From the beginning, the house maintained constant activity in this field, with its own weekly program and support for the festival that preceded the Asian Film Festival BCN, which it has organized in Barcelona since 2011, and the Sitges fantastic film festival, for a long time, the international festival in which a third of the programming was Asian. Today, Casa Asia not only celebrates ten years of the festival, but also maintains a weekly program (Saturdays at 8:00 p.m.): throughout the year at the Cinemes Girona, and also maintains a weekly program (Fridays at 10:00 p.m.) in Beteve. Filmin’s Casa Asia Channel has around four hundred titles, representative of the recent and not so recent history of Asian cinema. Soon, we will start a weekly program also at the Cine Paz in Madrid in collaboration with MK2. Far from being an isolated event, the AFFBCN tries to bring together the most relevant titles around which the House’s film program revolves annually.

This year’s proposal explores the cinematographies that come to us from Rotterdam, Berlin, Cannes, Locarno, Udine, Venice and San Sebastián, and those that we directly notice in the more than twenty-five countries of the Asian continent that participate in the AFFBCN. The presence of Asian cinema in the aforementioned festivals has been increasing every year and its acceptance has also been notorious. The successes achieved by Asian cinema in these festivals have facilitated its penetration and diffusion in the West. Unthinkable years ago, with rare exceptions, such as Japan and now, Korea, India and China. The AFFBCN, however, covers a much broader geographical area, ranging from IRAN, Central Asia, a region that includes the former Soviet Republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, to which are added Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka; Southeast Asia from China, Korea, Japan, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Cambodia, and Vietnam; and Asia Pacific with Australia and New Zealand.

Sadar Udham (2021) by Indian director Shoojit Sircar will cover the opening session of the tenth edition of the AFFBCN, which will take place at the Phenomena Cinemas, although the festival venue will continue to be the Girona Cinemas, where most of the programming will be screened. We will also have the support of Caixa Forum, where we will hold some of the sessions and other rooms. Our intention is to reach different audiences, both those who are interested in Asian cinema and culture and those who we can make discover a world that is not so strange or alien to ours, but whose diversity responds to a long tradition of resistance that has made possible the affirmation of the respective identities that are grouped behind the concept of nation. The great regions of Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia and Asia Pacific are represented in a festival whose objective is to make known other cultures and other worlds not so remote thanks to the speed of the media, although still largely ignored. Presenting human landscapes and scenarios inhabited by its guests, in which the event is narrated, as it happens in the cinema, the approach is easy and occurs with an immediacy that only visual information manages to reproduce.

Sardar Udham is a historical drama and biography of one of its most popular protagonists, and begins with the Jallianwalla massacre on April 13, 1919, which the protagonist witnessed, when Michael O’Dwyer ordered British troops to open fire on the crowd gathered before him. This bloody episode ended the lives of more than a thousand people. The contemplation of the facts made the revolutionary radicalize himself and set out to avenge what had happened. Before fleeing over the mountains of Afghanistan and arriving in London in 1933 under a false identity, Udham developed an extensive career that saw him work with the Ghadar Party and the London-based Indian Workers’ Association. For a radical like this Sikh, who knew poverty, exploitation and orphanhood, Marxism and nationalism inspired his struggle for freedom and independence. For more than two decades he was considered one of the key figures in the independence of India. Born in 1899 in Sunam, in the Sangrur district of Punjab, he died at the age of 41. Based on the book “The Patient Assassin” written by Anita Anand about the life of Udham Singh, who in prison called himself Mohamed Singh Azad during his last days in prison after committing the murder in London’s Caxton Hall on 13 March 1940 of O’Dwyer, the deputy governor of the Punjab, British India, between 1913 and 1919.

The director, Shoojit Sircar (Calcutta, 1967), is an Indian filmmaker, screenwriter and producer who made his debut with a romantic war drama, Yahaan, in 2005, and became known with the romantic comedy Vicky Donor (2012) for which, he received the National Film Award for Best Popular Film, the political thriller Madras Café (2013), which stages India’s intervention in the civil war in Sri Lanka and the assassination of Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi (1944-1991), followed by Piku (2015), one of his highest grossing films which received numerous critics’ awards, Pink (2016), October (2018) and Gulabo Sitabo (2020) Best Director. Sircar began shooting Sardar Udham in 2019 and presented it in October 2021, a record time considering the pandemic and the paralysis of some projects that had been or were to be undertaken coinciding with this time. The shooting was done in India, Russia, England and Ireland, and the veracity of the places that are recreated, as well as the characterization of the characters, contributes to the realism of the events that are narrated. Shoojit Sircar is currently working on the filming of The Driver.

The bet of this edition focuses on the historical and gender story, and as usual in the dramatic conflict both in the private and public spheres, that is to say, the one that links the individual and the community in which he resides from a conflict whose social repercussion does not leave the viewer unaware. The festival will bring together more than a hundred films that will be grouped into the five sections, Official, Official Panorama, Discoveries, NETPAC and Special, in which the different titles that have been selected are strategically distributed. The corresponding juries are made up of those members designated for this purpose, directors, film critics and writers who agree to fulfil this function.

The festival will close with a screening of the Australian film The Drower’s Wife. The Legend of Molly Johnson (2021), directed by Australian Aboriginal filmmaker Leah Purcell (1970). With a long and renowned career as an actress and screenwriter, since 1996, the year in which she moved from Brisbane to Sydney, Purcell made her film debut as a director with this film last year, receiving the Grand Jury Prize at the fourteenth edition of the Asian Film Awards. The underlying drama accumulates personal and family experiences that transcend the narrative that is built in each shot. Many episodes of his own life seem to be evoked in circumstances and situations that the characters bring with their improvised presence. The strength of the protagonist, a mother who takes care of the farm and her children in the absence of her husband, surrounded by the solitude of a rural landscape that she defends against any danger in sight. This film, like others that will be screened at this festival, will soon be released throughout Spain.

In addition to screening the opening and closing films mentioned so far, and Hirokazu Koreeda’s Broker (2022) or Park Chan-Wook’s Decision to Leave (2022), the festival will explore gender narratives and the social conflicts arising from historical, family or individual circumstances and their unresolved relationships with the world in which they have lived. Among the outstanding titles of this edition, it is worth mentioning When Pomegranates Howl, by Granaz Moussavi (Afghanistan, 2020), My First Summer by Katie Found (Australia, 2020) and Lonesome by Craig Boreham (Australia, 2022), A Father’s Diary by Golam Mustofa (Bangladesh, 2021), Return to Dust by Li Ruijun (China, 2022), Manchurian Tiger by Geng Jun (China, 2021), Cassiopeia by Shin Youn-Shick (Korea, 2022), Walker by Joel Lamangan (Philippines, 2021 ), Ann Hui’s Love After Love (Hong Kong, 2020), Kamila Andini’s Before, Then & Now (Indonesia, 2022), Hamid Reza Ghorbani’s Bone Marrow (Iran, 2020), Navid Behtoie’s Gisoum (Iran, 2021) , Happiness by Askar Uzabayev (Kazakhstan, 2022) The Sales Girl by Sengedorj Janchivdorf (Mongolia, 2022) Tomorrow I Quit by Bertrand Remaut (New Zealand, 2021), Quickening de Haya Waseem (Pakistán, 2021), Joyland de Saim Sadiq (Pakistán, 2022), The Edge of Daybreak by Taiki Sakpisit (Thailand, 2021) and Blood Moon Party by Nguyen Quang Dung (Vietnam, 2020).

Ten years have passed since the first edition of the AFFBCN, during which time we have filled Barcelona with more than a thousand films from all regions of Asia, and if going to the cinema is like going on a journey of education and discovery, the proposals of this festival have allowed us to explore worlds that we never get to know no matter how many times we visit them. Coincidentally, in the first edition, which took place in 2011, we gave the honorary award for the best career to Ann Hui, and this year we will screen her latest film, Love after Love, closing one circle and opening another, with the intention of continuing to offer the best Asian cinema to all audiences, who continue to be interested in films that defy distances and cultural differences such as those that come from Asia to better understand the world in which we live.

By Menene Gras Balaguer
Director of Asian Film Festival Barcelona