Asian Cinema
Cinema has been a part of Asian cultures for more than a century. We offer a selection of films from older classic titles (King Hu's THE FATE OF LEE KHAN) to more recent family dramas by the Japanese auteur Hirokazu Kore-eda, along with films from Singapore, South Korea, Vietnam and Thailand.
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Return to Dust
In rural Gaotai county, two lonely, middle-aged outcasts are pushed into an arranged marriage by their families. Ma (Wu Renlin) is a humble farmer with little to offer his timid and sickly wife, Cao (Hai Qing), except for a small abandoned house on a barren patch of land. From just a few seeds, t...
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Cash Calls Hell
Facing the final days of his prison sentence for vehicular manslaughter, Oida (Tatsuya Nakadai) dreads reentering society as a ruined man with no future prospects. Sensing his street smarts, Oida's cellmate promises him a pile of loot if he tracks down and kills three men whose names are on a lis...
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Red Peony Gambler
Wandering female gambler Oryu the Red Peony (Junko Fuji), so known for the tattoo on her shoulder, rambles into town searching for her father’s killer with a wallet left at the crime scene as her only clue. At a card game she meets a kindred spirit, the noble and handsome yakuza Katagiri (Ken Tak...
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Red Peony Gambler 2: Gambler's Obligation
The second installment of the influential Red Peony Gambler series finds the titular heroine Oryu taken under the arm of the benevolent gang boss of a silk farming town. Soon ruthless loan sharks encroach on the business determined to enslave and exploit the workers. When their treachery leads to...
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Red Peony Gambler 3: The Flower Cards Game
Maestro of Japanese cinema Tai Kato simultaneously satiates and transcends genre tropes in his masterful direction of the celebrated third film in the Red Peony Gambler series. From its classically melodramatic opening set piece involving an oncoming train, the stage is set for a visually rich ta...
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Seire
According to Korean folk tradition, the 21-day period after childbirth is known as “seire.” During this time, a newborn is vulnerable to bad luck, curses, and even evil spirits. Many superstitions surround these first three weeks, and new mother Hae-mi carefully follows every one of them. Her hus...
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Cracked
Ruja (actress/model Chayanit Chansangavej) returns to Thailand from New York with her young daughter Rachel to settle her late father's estate. Included in her inheritance are two mysterious portraits of a bewitching woman that she is told are worth a fortune, if only they weren't damaged. Desper...
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Green Night
Trapped in a cycle of oppression, Chinese immigrant Jin Xia (Fan Bingbing) works in customs at South Korea's Incheon Airport, where she encounters a mysterious green-haired girl (Lee Joo-young) acting suspiciously at the security checkpoint. Overcome by the unspoken attraction between them, she t...
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Wolves, Pigs and Men
Three brothers find themselves pitted against each other as rivals in the Yakuza underworld. Jiro robs stolen loot from his younger brother, Sabu, and his gang. When their eldest brother, Kuroki, learns of this, he makes his own plans to conspire against both of them, resulting in a treacherous n...
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Violent Panic: The Big Crash
Takashi, an expert bank-robber, plans to pull off the biggest heist of his career, stealing 300 million yen before fleeing to Brazil. However, when the robbery goes awry, Takashi finds himself alone and his getaway foiled. Trailed by the police, his lover, his partner-in-crime’s brother, and coun...
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Warm Water Under a Red Bridge
Brimming with magical realism, sensuality, and humor, the final film by revered filmmaker Shohei Imamura tells the story of Yosuke Sasano (Koji Yakusho), an unemployed salaryman who arrives in a remote fishing village following a rumor of hidden treasure. Instead, he meets Saeko Aizawa (Misa Shim...
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Love's Whirlpool
Six strangers meet at an underground sex club in Japan for a night of anonymous pleasure. While first-timers and regulars collide, each member’s attitude towards sex and satisfaction becomes challenged as their kinks and inhibitions begin to reveal more than they were initially willing to let on....
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Heroes Shed No Tears
In his “first real ballistic effort” (Eastern Kicks), director John Woo demonstrates the genesis of his trademark style of hyperkinetic action and violence. Eddy Ko stars as Chan Chung, the leader of an elite Chinese commando force enlisted by the Thai government to capture General Samton, a powe...
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The Sales Girl
When college coed Saruul takes a temporary job as a clerk in a sex shop, her poker-faced indifference makes her the perfect foil for the shop’s clientele, who range from slightly sheepish and cautiously curious to downright perverse. But it’s the shop’s flamboyant, eccentric female owner who init...
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In the Morning of La Petite Mort
Matsui (Yusuke Fukuchi), a homeless food delivery driver, spends his days and nights traveling from destination to destination without any place to find true solace. Longing to make a connection, he becomes infatuated with a beautiful young prostitute, Ching (Yun-Chih Wang), but her sudden disapp...
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Are You Lonesome Tonight?
On a dark night, Xueming (Eddie Peng) hits a pedestrian with his car and flees the scene. Desperate to escape his feelings of guilt, he decides to approach the dead man’s wife, Mrs Liang (Sylvia Chang). Meanwhile, the body is discovered riddled with bullets. Chen (Wang Yanhui), the detective in c...
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White River
Yang Fan lives in quiet Yanjiao and follows a daily routine that consists of cooking, cleaning and observing strict quarantine rules. But this mundane existence soon gives way to erotic entanglements when she begins sleeping with a neighborhood waiter under the watchful eye of her husband.
The f...
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Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy
An unexpected love triangle, a failed seduction, and a chance encounter with the past. Propelled by coincidence and imagination, and guided by love’s gentle current, Oscar-winning director Ryūsuke Hamaguchi (Drive My Car) presents an enchanting triptych that spins mundane encounters into a world ...
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Aloners
Jina (Gong Seung-yeon) is the top employee at a call center, but despite talking to customers all day, she has shut out the world beyond her headset; she lives alone, eats alone, sleeps alone, and her cell phone is her constant companion. When one day she's tasked with training a friendly and nai...
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The Princess Warrior
Descended from Genghis Khan and skilled in all forms of military combat, Princess Khutulun (Tsedoo Munkhbat) is one of the fiercest warriors in the Mongol Empire. Despite her talents on the battlefield, Khutulun is still expected to marry, and her father, Kaidu Khan, arranges for a union with the...
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Still the Water
On the subtropical Japanese island of Amami, sixteen-year-old Kaito (Nijiro Murakami) discovers a young woman’s body floating in the sea. His girlfriend Kyoko (Jun Yoshinaga) attempts to help him make sense of this mystery while also coming to terms with her shaman mother’s terminal illness. Toge...
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Radiance
Misako (Ayame Misaki) is a passionate writer of film versions for the visually impaired. At a screening, she meets Nakamori (Masatoshi Nagase), an older photographer who is slowly losing his eyesight. Misako soon discovers Nakamori’s photographs, which strangely bring her back to her past. Togeth...
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578 Magnum
After leaving the Special Forces, container truck driver and single father Hùng (Alexandre Nguyen) dedicates his life to raising his six-year-old daughter. But when she gets kidnapped and assaulted, Hùng relies on his martial arts training and combat skills to hunt down the twisted millionaire re...
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I Am Sun Mu
Operating under a pseudonym which means "no boundaries", North Korean defector Sun Mu doesn't just paint about his troubled life in the world’s most reclusive and repressive state – he paints images of hope. Sun Mu's work is imbued with nuance and heartbreak, political pop art that inverts the pr...