Where there's an up, there's a down. That's how things go.
Social & External
To commemorate the 70th anniversary of the victory of WWII, this documentary film describes the eight years of dauntless air-force fighting of the republic of China during the Anti-Japanese War, with only 300 combat-capable aircraft from China while Japan had over 2000.
A wistful but witty account of a trip to Beijing by filmmaker Viv Li, a Chinese art student who has been living abroad for ten years. Her stay with her family mercilessly exposes how uprooted she has become by her life abroad.
Chinese film directed by Zhang Ming,
A boy with horns gathers a group of Cosers, each armed with the same traditional woodworking tools, from the grocery store, the old cathedral, the gatehouse, the forest, the farmyard, the electric mahjong parlour, the old castle and so on. At midnight, with clumsy labor, they made a huge cross.
Andy is a novelist who works from home. One day, a girl mysteriously appears in his toilet. She claims to be from the future and needs his help. Her name is Pomegranate.
The player of Jia Zhangke's early film "Xiao Wu" and the famous independent film activist Wang Hongwei talked about Chinese independent films at the IFF Independent Film Forum.
Due to his history of theft in the past, Lin Kuan is falsely accused of stealing from his high school classmate. To prove his innocence, Lin enlists his friend Xiao Bing to make a plan that will clear his name. However, heir seemingly perfect plan takes a turn that pushes Lin to a dangerous edge.
Fishermen couple Ah Shing and Mei-wah, having lived from boat to shore, stayed together for most of their lives. After their son grew up, they have different visions towards the rest of their days. Ah Shing insists on fishing amid the decline of the local fishing industry. Mei-wah works as a factory worker and wishes for a more stable life. Even when there are subtle and profound changes in their relationships due to the different views, their affections for each other never stopped and they still support each other. This story is based on the real-life experience of the director's parents, and they play their own character in the film.
The Chinese police visit head-teacher Chen at home. Her daughter, a dissident filmmaker living in Hong Kong, plans yet another critical film about China's colonization of the small autonomous territory. The authorities demand that Chen travel to her daughter to stop the film project. What they do not take into account is that Chen and her daughter lost contact long ago.
In 1946, Heidi is entrusted to a Swiss family by her father. He will never come back for her. Today, François Yang questions his mother about her past. What follows is a journey to China, a quest to reconstruct memory. Through contact with her brothers and sister, Heidi measures the extent of the drama experienced by her family that remained in China, persecuted by the Communist Party.
A soon-to-be first-time voter, the filmmaker’s thought-provoking journey into the Rust Belt and South captures four Asian American voters’ ardent first time grassroots political participation ignited by the 2016 rise of “Chinese Americans for Trump.” FIRST VOTE is a character driven cinema verité style film chronicling the democratic participation of four Asian American voters from 2016 through the 2018 midterm elections.
A policeman investigates an introverted signal-station manager suspected of raping a hotel clerk.
Xingxi travels alone to Alor Setar, a town in Northern Malaysia. As a consequence of a blown tire, she experiences three variant adventures. She introduces herself to people using different identities with mysterious secrets. In return, what the journey brings her is thoroughly unexpected. In the first adventure, Brooke is a traveler; in the second adventure, Brooke is an anthropologist; in the third, Brooke is a divorcée. She is a disheartened woman who comes across a French writer named Pierre. The two lonely travelers become instant friends. Their age gap enables them to have their respective insights into life and death. Meanwhile, it is not until the enigmatic side of Alor Setar begins to unfold that Brooke tells Pierre the true reason why she has come. They seek to understand the interaction between love and life. As the story comes to an end, mother nature shows her beauty with the magical Blue Tears phenomenon on prominent display.
A documentary chronicling the coming of age of a young chinese man.
On May 12, 2008 , the biggest earthquake in Chinese history occurred in the film maker's hometown of Wenchuan. According to official polls, 69,159 were killed, 374,141 were seriously injured and 17,469 are still considered to be missing. The film maker's parents, central character in the film, are survivors. In a surreal hybrid of documentary footage, experimental abstraction and fictional elements, "On the Way to the Sea" studies the human fragility and spiritual homelessness generated by such disasters.
Working as a secretary for a legal office, Xiaofen records clients detailing the sordid aspects of their lives: divorce cases, medical malpractice suits, financial corruption and old-fashioned personal revenge. Xiaofen starts to question her own relationship with her boyfriend (Deng Gang), fresh out of prison and looking to get into trouble again with his gambling habit. While Xiaofen deals with the overwhelming social malaise surrounding her, rumors spread of a disaster at the local chemical plant, threatening to poison the entire city.
A microcosm of China past and present flows through Xu Tong’s intimate docu “Shattered,” in which the maverick indie filmmaker continues to refine his techniques and concerns shown in his previous “Wheat Harvest” and “Fortune Teller.”
Filmed over three years on China’s railways, The Iron Ministry traces the vast interiors of a country on the move: flesh and metal, clangs and squeals, light and dark, and language and gesture. Scores of rail journeys come together into one, capturing the thrills and anxieties of social and technological transformation. The Iron Ministry immerses audiences in fleeting relationships and uneasy encounters between humans and machines on what will soon be the world’s largest railway network.
Follow the lives of the elderly survivors who were forced into sex slavery as “Comfort Women” by the Japanese during World War II. At the time of filming, only 22 of these women were still alive to tell their story. Through their own personal histories and perspectives, they tell a tale that should never be forgotten to generations unaware of the brutalization that occurred.
In northeastern China the Songhua River flows west from the border of Russia to the city of Harbin, where four million people depend on it as a source of water. Songhua is a portrait of the varying people that gather where the river meets the city, and an ethnographic study of the intimate ways in which they play and work.
Four siblings' lives change drastically when their ailing mother takes a turn for the worse over the holiday season.
Ip Man’s promising career as a Policeman is ruined after he is framed for murder and targeted by a mob boss’s daughter.
Tom and Mae Garvey are a Tennessee farming couple battling violent floods to save their land. In addition to natural disasters, the Garveys fight to stop a selfish land developer and a local corporation from foreclosing on their farm. While Mae stays at home to care for their children and tend to the crops, Tom finds work as a scab at a steel mill to preserve his family's property.
A cranky middle-aged dad and his two best friends find themselves out of step in a changing world of millennial CEOs and powerful preschool principals.
Two married couples adjust to the vast social and economic changes taking place in China from the 1980s to the present.
In a near-future city where soaring opulence overshadows economic hardship, Gwen and her daughter, Jules, do all they can to hold on to their joy, despite the instability surfacing in their world.
A brother and sister escape from Japanese-occupied Shanghai to Japanese-occupied Taiwan, to stay with their grandfather who runs a Kung-Fu school there. However, the master of a Japanese Kung- Fu school in Taiwan has plans to bringing all other schools on the island under his domination, and part of his plan involves the murder of the grandfather.
A mom and dad who usually say no decide to say yes to their kids' wildest requests — with a few ground rules — on a whirlwind day of fun and adventure.
As Po looks for his lost action figures, the story of how the panda inadvertently helped create the Furious Five is told.
A young monk must face the Extended Iron Claw technique of a powerful warlord seeking to destroy Shaolin.
An extraordinary look at the lives of a middle-aged couple in the midst of the wife's breast cancer diagnosis.
A young Indigenous game warden arrests an infamous poacher only to discover that the poacher knows the location of a plane carrying millions of dollars that has crashed in a frozen lake. When a group of criminals and dirty cops are alerted to the poacher’s whereabouts, the warden and the poacher team up to fight back and escape across the treacherous lake before the ice melts.
When young dad, Joe, discovers he's dying, drifter Charlie is given a unique opportunity to turn his life around. A story of family, identity and starting again.
After NBA star Kevin Durant switches talent with 16 year old Brian, the teenager becomes the star of his high school team, but Durant starts struggling and eventually learns an important lesson.
A pampered cat takes for granted the lucky hand he has been dealt after he is rescued and loved by Rose, a kind-hearted and passionate student. When he loses his ninth life, fate steps in to set him on a transformative journey.
Calvin Campbell is a former professional baseball player sent to an early retirement due to his panic attacks at the plate. Even though he had all the talent for the big leagues, he struggles with the curveballs life has thrown him. Today, he mindlessly sleepwalks through his days and the challenge of raising his teenager daughter. His life is in a slow downward spiral when it is suddenly awakened and invigorated by the most unlikely person – Produce, a young-man with Down syndrome who works at the local grocery store.
A unique friendship develops when a little girl and her dying mother inherit a cook - Mr. Church. What begins as an arrangement that should only last six months, instead spans fifteen years.
Laura and Simon have been best friends since college. Over the years, they've realized their bond is more than platonic. Can they—and should they—risk everything to explore a love that has existed all along?
A portrait of the day-to-day operations of the National Gallery of London, that reveals the role of the employees and the experiences of the Gallery's visitors. The film portrays the role of the curators and conservators; the education, scientific, and conservation departments; and the audience of all kinds of people who come to experience it.
Parent and child journey through the outskirts of society a decade after a pandemic has wiped out half the world's population. As a father struggles to protect his child, their bond—and the character of humanity—is tested.
