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.
-
Fancy Dance
-
Sumo Do, Sumo Don't
College student Shuhei (Masahiro Motoki) finds out he is lacking a few credits for graduation. His crafty professor, a sumo enthusiast, says he’ll let it slip if Shuhei joins the school team and competes in the regional university tournament. Shuhei begrudgingly joins the team, which includes one...
-
Yohanna
After being sent to the Indonesian island of Sumba to deliver aid to communities devastated by Cyclone Seroja, young nun Yohanna (Laura Basuki) borrows a van to transport supplies, only to have it stolen. Determined to recover the vehicle, she joins forces with Alice (Kirana Grasela), a streetwis...
-
Skin of Youth
Saigon, 1990s. San, a transgender sex worker, longs for the gender-affirming surgery that will allow her to live as her true self. Determined to help her realize that dream, her lover Nam risks everything by entering the underground world of dog-cage fighting. But as their hopes become entangled ...
-
Return to Burma
After decades of military rule, Burma holds its first presidential election. Many Burmese living abroad believe that peace and prosperity will soon follow, including Wang Xing-Hong, who is living as an immigrant laborer in Taiwan and saves his money so he can return home. When Xing-Hong arrives, ...
-
Who'll Stop the Rain
In 1994 post-martial law Taiwan, college student Chi-wei (Ling-Wei Lee) begins to question the culture of conformity surrounding her. Drawn into a student movement resisting the repression of creative freedom, she becomes entangled with Ching (Hsiao-Fei Yeh) and her boyfriend Kuang (Roy Chang), t...
-
An Unfinished Film
In January 2020, director Xiaorui (Mao Xiaorui) reunites his cast and crew to complete a film that was abandoned during production ten years earlier. However, the team is suddenly placed into lockdown together during the onset of COVID-19. Confronted with the challenges of the pandemic, Xiaorui a...
-
Stranger Eyes
After enduring months of a fruitless police investigation into the disappearance of their daughter, a young, estranged couple, Junyang and Peiying, realize they are being filmed surreptitiously when they begin receiving mysterious packages at their door containing DVDs with footage of their daily...
-
Total Trust
TOTAL TRUST is an eye-opening and deeply disturbing documentary about surveillance technology, abuse of power and censorship. Through the haunting stories of people in China who have been monitored, intimidated and even tortured, the film sparks a global debate about the dangers that Big Data and...
-
True Mothers
After a long and unsuccessful struggle to get pregnant, Satoko and her husband decide to adopt a child. Over the next six years, the middle-class couple and their young son Asato settle into a comfortable, albeit routine, life. The family’s orderly existence is shattered by the arrival of Hikari,...
-
The Wolves Always Come at Night
In the Mongolian desert, young nomadic couple Davaa and Zaya live with their four children, bound to the rhythms of the land. When a sudden, devastating sandstorm wipes out half their herd, they are forced to abandon their home and move to the outskirts of the city. But as they struggle to adapt ...
-
Assassin
Shanghai, 1932. Occupied and on the brink of war. When elite fighter Zhang Mubai (Wang Ming) is recruited for a top-secret assassination, he’s thrown into brutal battle against the Japanese military machine. Hunted through city streets, train lines, and enemy strongholds, Mubai fights his way thr...
-
I Am Baseball
After her baseball-loving husband passes away, Natsuko (Mitsuki Moriyama) finds out that he owed money to his amateur team, the Tamagawa Mets. Shigeno (Takehiko Fujita), the manager of the Mets, recognizes Natsuko's raw pitching talent and makes her a deal to forgive the debt if she joins the tea...
-
Ice Poison
Barely able to survive on their meager corn harvest, Xing-hong (Wang Shin-Hong) and his father make their way down from the mountains, hoping to borrow money from relatives. Eventually, they pawn their cow for a moped so that Xing-hong can earn a living picking up taxi fares. His first customer i...
-
Poor Folk
A-Hong and San-mei, two migrants from Myanmar, live precarious lives moving between the sprawling metropolis of Bangkok and the remote border town of Dagudi. Desperate to raise enough money to rescue his younger sister from human traffickers, A-Hong turns to the drug trade. Meanwhile, San-mei wor...
-
Trio
Han is a suicidal saxophonist, Mun is a violent simpleton with an IQ of 80, and Maria is a single mother with dreams of becoming a nun. Han has tried numerous times to kill himself, but nothing ever works. When he witnesses his wife's infidelity, it's the last straw. He gets a call from Mun and t...
-
Angels Wear White
In a small seaside town, two schoolgirls are assaulted by a middle-aged man in a motel. Mia, a teenager who was working on reception that night, is the only witness. For fear of losing her job, she says nothing. Meanwhile, 12-year-old Wen, one of the victims, finds that her troubles have only jus...
-
People and Meat
In Seoul, three broke and lonely seniors form an unlikely bond and reinvent themselves as the infamous “dine-and-dash trio,” slipping into restaurants for expensive meals and then vanishing before the bill arrives. As their quest for free meat turns them into local celebrities, the friends discov...
-
Passion
When Kaho (Aoba Kawai) and Tomoya (Ryuta Okamoto) announce their engagement at a celebratory dinner with friends, they are unprepared for the emotional turmoil that is unleashed once a prior infidelity comes to light. Later that evening, Tomoya is invited to the apartment of his former classmate,...
-
Onimasa
Adapted from a semi-autobiographical novel by Tomiko Miyao, ONIMASA recounts the sophisticated tale of an uber-fierce yakuza boss (played with savage intensity by Tatsuya Nakadai) as seen through the eyes of his resilient adopted daughter. Kidnapping, prostitution and revenge are all meticulously...
-
Tokyo Bordello
Sold into a Yoshiwara red-light district brothel by her destitute father, demure ingenue Hisano (Yuko Natori) soon learns the ways of her new world from the establishment’s top three courtesans. Her coming of age is a trial by fire as she rises up the ranks, while juggling lovers and her own pers...
-
Murder on D. Street
The female owner of a soba noodle shop is found dead on D. Street. The police rule it a suicide, but the brilliant yet eccentric private detective Kogoro Akechi and his wife Fumiyo suspect foul play. Launching their own investigation, they observe strange goings on at a secondhand bookshop and di...
-
Shanghai Blues
In 1937 after The Second Sino-Japanese War breaks out a soldier and a young woman have an awkward meet cute in darkness under a bridge as they seek refuge during a bomb raid. Although they can’t see each other’s faces they promise to meet again after the dust settles. Ten years later the soldier,...
-
Antiporno
Kyoko, a young artist with a sadomasochistic streak, wreaks havoc on everyone that she encounters, but her absolute worst behavior is reserved for her simpering older assistant Noriko, whom she routinely humiliates in increasingly kinky ways. That is, until their sense of reality gets upended in ...