New perspectives of Asian cinema

We resume the programming of Asian cinema in Madrid, from April 13 to June 15, 2024., to continue showing a cinema that has ceased to be an exception to be increasingly present in national and international festivals or in the annual programming of our cinemas. In this new chapter we present Central Asian cinema from Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, as well as an interesting film from Afghanistan, a country which we have known very little for some time. Iranian cinema continues to be important to us, as is evident from the two films selected for their social interest. Next, a controversial production from India on Kashmir and the historical roots of an unresolved conflict, ending with recent Southeast Asian cinema from the Philippines, Korea, Indonesia and Japan. With the ten titles programmed we cover a period of five years, between 2019 and 2023, in which Asian cinema has experienced a significant growth in its audiences in the West. Proof of this is the increased presence of these cinematographies in international and Spanish festivals. The valorisation of most of these productions coming from such remote geographies has contributed to normalize the interest of a global cinema, beyond the physical and virtual borders that have often separated in blocks the cinematographic production between continents.

PROGRAMME

Saturday April 13th, 2024, at 12PM

Akbar, Soori, Mohammed, and Hakim are the only young Afghan immigrants in Iran who have formed a rock band. All they ask for is the chance to play live. The Forbidden Strings shows the musical quartet struggling to make themselves be heard. As the title suggests, they face quite a few challenges. The four band members are the children of Afghan parents who fled to Iran and are unaware of the danger that returning to their homeland may pose for them. Their families are worried about them. The band promises to stay out of trouble when they get to Kabul, but it doesn’t take long for them to realize that this is impossible. Special Mention in the Discoveries Section of AFFBCN 2021.

Hasan Noori was born in Iran in 1985 to Afghan refugee parents. He holds a bachelor’s degree in sociology and a master’s degree in film from Tehran University. For years he has worked for NGOs fighting against child labour, mainly in the Afghan refugee community. The Forbidden String is the director’s first feature film.

Saturday April 20th, 2024, at 12PM

Yoo-ri seems like an exemplary student, coming from a wealthy family, but suddenly she commits suicide. Detectives suspect it’s a suicide, but her mother Hye-young believes it’s murder orchestrated by Ye-na, a classmate, and Gi-beom, her teacher. No matter how much the detectives investigate, the statements of these three individuals continue to contradict each other. The only clue they have is that Hye-Young caused suffering to her daughter. While the mother thinks everything she did was in favor and for the good of Yoo-ri. Will the truth about her death finally be uncovered?

Kim Su-in is a South Korean screenwriter. She graduated from Dankook University’s Department of Creative Writing and completed her major in the Department of Film at Chung-Ang University’s Graduate School. She wrote adaptations and screenplays for several feature films, including the adaptation of Oksu Station Ghost (2021) and the screenplay of B Cut (2021). Toxic Parents (2023) is her first feature film.

Saturday April 27th, 2024, at 12PM

Son of the Macho Dancer is a coming-of-age film about Inno, a boy who wants to escape the abuse of his father Pol, a retired stripper addicted to drugs. One day, Tere, Inno’s mother, forces him to work in a male strip club, but just as he starts working, Tere abandons her son and her husband. At the club, Inno meets Bambi, an ex-prostitute who organizes private parties to sexually satisfy the rich. Bambi invites Inno to join these parties, where he meets Jun Mallari, a wealthy gay businessman. Inno seduces Jun, attracted by the life of comfort he offers, becoming his plaything and abandoning his father. Kyle, a handsome 19-year-old who seems jealous of Inno for being another of Jun’s toys, warns him to stay away from Jun before it’s too late. But Inno turns a deaf ear and ends up in a world even more violent than the one he escaped from.

Multi-award-winning Filipino director Joel C. Lamangan studied film and theatre in the Philippines and abroad. He was an actor and director for theatre and television, until he started acting for film and was able to make his directorial debut in 1991 with Darna. Among his most notable films are: The Flor Contemplacion Story (1995), for which he won the Golden Pyramid Award at the Cairo Film Festival in 1995 and Nora Aunor took home the Best Actress Award; Pusong Mamon (1998), Deathrow (2000), Hubog (2001), Huling Birhen sa Lupa (2003), Blue Moon (2006) and Deadline (2011). In 2014, her feature film Hustisya won the Best Actress Award and the Netpac at the Philippine independent film festival Cinemalaya. It was also screened at the Toronto festival and competed at the Warsaw and Nantes festivals. With Bhoy Intsik (2017) he won the special jury prize at the Porto festival. Rainbow’s Sunset won nine awards at the 2018 Manila festival, in addition to the special jury prize and the best actor award for Eddie Garcia and Tony Mabesa at the 2019 Houston festival.

Saturday May 4th, 2024, at 12PM

The plot follows a Kashmiri Hindu college student, raised by his exiled grandfather and shielded from the knowledge of the circumstances of the death of his parents. After his grandfather’s death, the student, who had come to believe at college that the exodus was benign, becomes driven to uncover the facts of his family’s deaths. The plot alternates between the student’s quest in the present time, 2020, and his family’s travails of thirty years before. The film depicts the exodus and the events leading up to it as a genocide.

Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri is an Indian film director, screenwriter and author who works in Hindi cinema. As of 2022, he is a member of the board of India’s Central Board of Film Certification and a cultural representative of Indian Cinema at the Indian Council for Cultural Relations. Agnihotri made his directorial debut with the crime thriller Chocolate (2005) and has directed multiple films since which failed to propel his career forward until The Tashkent Files (2019) which emerged as a commercial success and earned him the National Film Award for Best Screenplay – Dialogues. He also wrote and directed The Kashmir Files (2022) which emerged as one of the highest-grossing Indian film of 2022.

Saturday May 11th, 2024, at 12PM

Jahangir Golstaneh is a novelist who has been married for several years to Rana and they have a seven-year-old son. Jahangir is the author of several novels, although he has only been able to publish one of them. His only source of income is writing, and he does not want to do anything else to get out of his precariousness. This decision is the cause of the problems and obstacles that arise throughout his life.

Director Ali Zhakan was born in Tehran in 1950 and began his career as an actor. He made his first feature film The Mare in 1986 and has been acclaimed at international festivals such as Venice and Karlovy Vary, among others.

Saturday May 18th, 2024, at 12PM

Orpa is a 16-year-old good student, forcibly betrothed by her father to a wealthy man from Jayapura. Reluctant to become a submissive housewife, one night she decides to escape to pursue her studies in Wamena, where she wants to learn more about the medicinal effects of Papua’s plants. Along the way, she meets Ryan, a 28-year-old aspiring musician. During their journey, as they exchange ideas and opinions about life, a sweet friendship blossom between them. Their journey is fraught with difficulties as they are pursued both by Orpa’s father and by villagers who accuse Ryan of committing a murder.

Theo Rumansara was born on 1989 in Biak, Papua. He never took art seriously until he won a film competition in his high school back in 2004, what made him transition from IT programmer to a musician-filmmaker and never looked back. In 2020 he won Jendela Papua, a talent scouting & filmmaking lab program which finally brought him closer to his chance to direct his first film Orpa, which won the Best Performance Award at the Jogja-NETPAC Asian Film Festival in 2022.

Saturday May 25th, 2024, at 12h

Makato (Matsuya Onoe) is an elite banker working for a large bank in Tokyo headquarters. Due to a minor mistake, he is demoted to a small branch in a rural town. Devastated by his situation, he retreats into fantasy musical reveries and encounters an interesting cast of characters that accentuate the small town, until he finally meets the beautiful Yoshino (Kanako Momota), who runs a goldfish collection store. Makoto falls in love at first sight.

Born in 1984, Makabe Yukinori hails from Tokyo Prefecture. With ROBOT COMMUNICATIONS INC. In 2012, he won the Grind-prix at the Louis Vuitton Journey Awards with his short film The Sun and The Moon, and won the Audience Award with A Piece of Dogu at SSFF & ASIA 2014. His first feature film I Am A Monk, was released in 2015. The film won the Audience Award at the Chicago Emerging Asian Cinema and the Platinum Award at the WorldFest International Film Festival in Houston.

Saturday June 1st, 2024, at 12PM

On the shores of Issyk-Kul Lake lives Termikul, a former history teacher who tragically lost his only daughter. Termikul believes in an ancient legend that since ancient times the people of Kyrgyzstan do not fish in this sacred lake for food, because it is believed that the souls of the ancestors are there waiting for reincarnation. However, a neighbour of his, Askhat, feeds his family by poaching in the lake. His eleven-year-old daughter, Jyldyz, persistently objects, because like the old man, she also believes in the legend and does not eat fish.

Emil Atageldiev is a professional musician and a highly awarded artist of the Kyrgyz Republic since 2001. He has been a member of the Kyrgyz Union of Directors of Photography since 2014. In 2010 he graduated from the Higher Courses of Screenwriters and Film Directors, VGIK, in Moscow. The Lake is his first film as a director and co-writer, and he presented it for the first time at the Shanghai International Film Festival 2020.

Saturday June 8th, 2024, at 12PM

An elementary school teacher with writing aspirations asks her students for help in writing a new story. The plot ultimately concerns a girl who, after losing her mother, finds herself trapped in a story with her teacher that has no future.

Hamidreza Ghotbi is an actor and film director. As a filmmaker he has devoted his career to making short films and That Night’s Train is his first feature film.

Saturday June 15th, 2024, at 12PM

Man has always aspired to greatness. He gives up the joys and worries of life on the path to greatness, devotes his life to making a new discovery or a great example of creation and to being known to the world. A young mathematician, Bahadyr begins working on his own on a hypothesis laid out by mathematician Henri Puankare in 1904. The investigation consists of solving one of the seven problems that have been unresolved for many years and for which the Clay Mathematical Institute intends to award the Millennium Prize to whoever solves it first. But time passes, and progress on the Puankare conjecture still lies on the table of a now elderly mathematician, who was left at the starting point of the issue.

Muzaffarkhan Erkinov was born on 1983. He has worked on many TV series, documentaries and short films. From his trajectory in cinematography, we emphasise such films as Armon, Iqtidar, Yagonam, Kasas, Avlony, Poincare and Aydinlar. He has received national awards such as the Tasanno and the Ehtirom, and he obtained a prize at the International Film Festival for Creative Flight, and another at the Eurasian Film and TV Festival for Slavic Tale.

From April 13th to June 15th, 2024
MK2 Cine Paz | Calle de Fuencarral, 125, Madrid
6€