A documentary project by both Palestinians and Israelis that provides the necessary context for the eradication of several Palestinian villages in the occupied West Bank by the IDF and armed settlers—it’s hard-hitting but a testament to courageous and responsible filmmaking in torrid circumstances.
Aparna Sen’s first feature is a well-tuned Indian melodrama about the relationships that define and change us as a tender-hearted teacher lends her apartment to an ex-student and her boyfriend.
Malaysia’s taboo but painful ‘513’ incident is tackled through Chong’s sophomore feature, an exceptional work that shrewdly uses a diptych narrative structure to delve deeper into unresolved trauma.
This ‘exploitative’ curious oddity in the Shaw Brothers canon blends bloody vengeance wuxia action with taboo-breaking erotica as a powerful Madam operating a brothel lusts over a rebellious sex worker.
A donkey becomes both a gift and a nuisance in an Indian village, as this stirring Tamil film makes pointed observations about the irrational anxieties and delusions of the religiously reliant.
A significant work of Malayalam cinema, Aravindan’s work, by turns exuberant and elegiac, about a circus act coming to a rural Indian village teases out the hypnotic and exhibitionistic qualities of performative art in ways that challenge our unquestioned spectatorship.
A Trans-Siberian train journey turns into a ‘Trans-Mongolian’ detour on the steppes as a group of Westerners find themselves ‘enjoying’ the hospitality of a Mongolian Princess and her people, in an oddly-structured but exuberant work that challenges exoticist assumptions in East-West cultural discourse.
A comforting if bittersweet retelling of Sammo Hung’s formative years at the Peking Opera School where he plays a master mentoring his younger self, as it explores tradition and passion at the crossroads of societal and cultural change.
This award-winning debut feature from Sundance is an empathetic take on the anxieties over identity and belonging as Afghan refugees hope to start a new life in Iran.
This Malaysian slow cinema mood piece may be slight with narrative but it re-centers the protagonist, a Vietnamese illegal immigrant who does odd jobs, in her own space of existential longing.
Eternality Tan 