New York Asian Film Festival (July 11-27, 2025 FLC) REVIEWS

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DECHEN RODER: I, THE SONG (2024)

TRAILER

Tracking down one's more risqué double in Bhutan

This film from Bhutan about a staid schoolteacher who goes on a search of her lookalike from a viral sex video that has ruined her reputation is a beautiful, hypnotic, exotic little film full of the clothes, music, tea drinking and Himalayan scenery of its setting. A French writer has called it "a leap forward for the cinema of Bhutan." The authentic and ethnic are muted into beauty in the filmmaking even if details are fudged toward the end. But maybe we aren't meant to take it literally anyway. A wise lady the protagonist meets says "whether dreams or reality, it's all illusion" and perhaps this Buddhist view underlies everything here. What does this pursuit of a double mean? Here, maybe it's new possibilities, but also the search for a mysterious siren, because the risky lady seems to have disappeared, only to reappear, perhaps as the protagnoist in makeup, or in flashbacks.

Key to the effects are the rather sphynx-like actress, Tandin Bidha, who plays both Nima, the wrongly dishonored teacher, and Meto, the mysterious woman she tries to track down; and the actor Jimmie Wangyal, who plays Tandin, the singer and songwriter in a bar in Gelephu, near the Indian border, where a bit of detective work scrutinizing the infamous video leads Nima. Wangyal has a slinky brooding quality; Bidha is a bit of a Greta Garbo herself.

A school opens the film with colorfully costumed children on an auditorium stage who are singing a sweet English song. Te protagonist Nima (Tandin Bidha), a teacher, is called to the office of the principal (Kezang Dorjee aka Kazee) and told she's fired because she can't be around, it's too disturbing. She was in a viral sex video. Except, she insists, she wasn't; it's not her. But even her boyfriend Penjor (Dorji Wangdi), caught hosting traditional Bhutanese folk plays, is sure it is.

And so begins Nima's search for her double, starting with the video itself, which she hasn't seen, though everyone in Bhutan otherwise seems to have done. (As is pointed out later, the country has a population of seven hundred thousand and it's almost as if everybody knows you.) She visits a somewhat seedly local video dealer (Karma Tenzin), and though the video is too shoert to be on a disc, he gets her a copy of it.

Studying it at home, she finds the woman in it has a mole on her face, but Penjor says she might have drawn it on for the video. The mole is our only clue that these are two women, except that Nima's road trip/investigation locates numerous facts about the woman, Meto. Indeed we learn more about Meto in the film than about Nima.

In Gelephu, where her double lived, everyone calls Nima Meto, or at least thinks she is Meto's sister. Asking around for Meto, Nima is soon directed to Moon Bar and the entertainer there, Tandin, Meto's boyfriend, but she has left him and he is angry and wounded and will not speak of her. She turns to others. A sprightly girlfriend tells how she and Meto wanted to enter a song and dance competition. Actually, she tried out with Tandin. One of the film's most memorable scenes is the flashback to Tandin improvising wild and crazy tunes on his guitar to unnerve Meto, while she shows her strength and determination, singing and dancing to it anyway. It's quite an unexpected kind of meet cute,and an indication of the important seedy grace and glamor Jimmie Wangyal lends to this film and the skill in altering him for flashbacks and Tandin Bidha to become Nima's double.

Meto isn't at her former workplace either, a small printshop (beautiful and beautifully lit in a yellow light like a lot of this handsome film whose dp was the Indian born and trained Rangoli Agarwal, a woman like the director). But there the boss Phuntsu (Tshering Dorji), who again at first takes her for her double, suggests Nima go to Meto's home village, and she drives there and meets the familiy of Meto. Yes, they too generally mistake her for her double, notably Meto's grandmother Aum Tshomo (Choney Zangmo), who doesnt see very well anymore.

Another strain is introdced at this point of the lost sacred song which the gradnmother says has been "stolen" (apparently for a popular recording) and begs to have returned to the village so she can die in peace. Nima can't grasp how a song can be "stolen" or "returned." Dechen Roder's idea (as she explains in an interview) is to paraellel the idea of a "stolen song" with a stolen experience - because it turns out the intimate video of Meto was shot without her knowledge. Grandma wants to song back; Meto (as well as the collaterally damaged Nima) wants her intimate experience back. It's interesting that on the surface the film refers to things like invasiion of privacy, perhaps social media and the internet, and the damaging exploitation of tradtional culture, but makes something beautiful, haunting and poetic about it - sometning one online writer for a website called Dirty Movies sees in detail as riffs off Hitchcockk's Vertigo. Director Dechen Roder ceertainly combines the ethnic, the poetic, the musical and the realistic in interesting ways, though in the latter half some of the editing shows a loss of continuity.

I, the Song, in Dzongkha, 113 mins., premiered at Tallinn Black Night Nov. 19, 2024 winning the Critics Picks Best Director award. It wasalso shown at Goa Nov. 28 and at Vesoul Asian Film Festival. Screened for this review as part of the Jul. 11-27, 2025 New York Asian Film Festival.

SCHEDULE:
Monday July 14, 3:00pm
Film at Lincoln Center

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HANBUNG BRAMANTYO: GOWOK: JAVANESE KAMASUTRA (2024)

Indonesian epic of sex training strays too far from its opening sweetness

In his detailed and admiring reviw in The Film Verdict Clarence Tsui opens by declaring Hanung Bramantyo "one of the most commercially successful Indonesian directors of his generation," and this film, arrived at Rotterdam, "something that’s epic in every sense." Actually it's "epic" somewhat in the sense of Ryan Coogler's genre-busting astonishment Sinners. But it probably has narrower appeal. It's a generation-crossing tale of a gone local custom, sex training for well-born young men. This leads to a great, tragic romance, with ends after two hours in spell-weaving and horrific violence. The memory of the romance is sweet; of the final violence, perhaps not so great, though that ending, "packaged with a layered twist" as a Letterboxd contributor puts it, is indeed ingenious. As Tsui says, this film is "lushly mounted period drama of the old-school, big-screen variety." It feels at times as if it could have been made in the time it covers, 1955-65, except such sexually related subject matter would not have been broached and such a tale would probably not have ended in such genre-busting violence. The early love story is enchanting; what follows at times a bit of a slog.

The thing we learn about is the Gowok, which went out after a massacre in 1965. A Gowok was a woman pledged to remain single all her life, whose sole function was to train young males of high status in the ways of sex and of giving pleasure to their female partners. But this is indeed a grand and at moments beautiful production.

The Gowok is Nyai Santi (Lola Amaria). She has a hunble young assistant and planned successor, Ratri Sujita (Alika Jantinia). The youth brought to them, who is destined for marriage soon and for a higher role in the region than expected, is young Kamanjaya (Indonesian pop star Devano Danendra). The setting is a virtual palace, bordering on an impressive tiered waterfall where women go to do laundry, and Santi to pray and meditate.

What happens is that young Jaya immediately falls for equally young Ratri, and though she is of the lowliest origins, he is one rare priviledged young man who is thoroughly imbued with radical ideas about the education and and liberation of Indonesian women. While he is secretly taking Ratri aside and wooing her and kissing her and assuring her this is okay, he is also coaching her in the liberation of women and referring her to a program in town (which she's able to get to thereafter) that will provide her a pathway to a better life than being the successor to the Gowok Santi and never marrying. He promises to marry her and shows her an attractive journal he is keeping in which he describes his love for her.

Viewers in hopes of a sexy film will be disappointed, because while glimpses of the sexual training and of the book of Kamasutra-related instruction used by Santi and passed on to Ratri are provided, we don't see much of the actual Gowok-to-proviledged-youth amorous training, which probably would have made local viewers uncomfortable, and anyway is not what director Bramantyo is aiming for.

There are scenes between Jantinia and Denendra that are extremely sweet and touching - and hopeful, though we suspect that Jayi's promises for one reason or another are too good to be true. After his training with Santi he must leave, though he doesn't want to be away from Ratri. He then goes into military training. Af first he and Ratri exchange frequent letters. Then Jayi's letters stop. Ratri is devastated. She loses all her hope, and eventually accepts her fate of remaining in Santi's service and grooming as a Gowok. This accounts for nearly the first half of the two hours-plus film, a segment I can recommend to anyone.

Afterwards things get much more complicated and full of intrigue and decepton. Ratri's deception - Jayi's letters were, of course, derailed so Ratri did not see them - leads Ratri, much later, when Jayi has taken on very high status and has a son, Bagas, sent to the Gowok, to seek revenge, cruelly deceived, though finally enlightened into the machinations of Santi. There are light notes, among which trans person Aldi Bisl as Gowok servant Liyan
is notable, and young Ali Fikry is adept as the presumed son of the mature Jayi (Reza Rahadian). The cast is good throughout. But the sterling memory is of young Jaya wooing young Ratri, itself convincing proof that they know how to make sophisticated and entertaining movies in Indonesia.

Gowok: Javanese Kamasutra, 132 mins., premiered at Rotterdam. It was screened for this review as part of the Jul. 11-17, 2025 New York Asian Film Festival.

SCHEDULE:
Tuesday July 15, 6:00pm
LOOK Cinemas W57

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ANNE SUZUKI IN HANGING GARDEN

FROM NYAFF: A special 20th anniversary screening of NYAFF 2025 Filmmaker in Focus Toshiaki Toyoda’s unnerving 2005 portrait of one family’s secrets, the film that launched a Japanese genre. - Festival blurb.

TOSHIAKI TOYODA: HANGING GARDEN (2005)

Toyoda's provocative portrait of an urban family, everyone going their own way

Before Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Tokyo Sonata, Kore-eda’s Still Walking, and Sion Sono’s Noriko’s Dinner Table, it has been said, there was Toshiaki Toyoda’s Hanging Garden, the film that "started it all." (But compare also the crooked famly genre, represented by Bong Joon-ho's Parasite and Hirakasu Koreeda's Shoplifters.)

The Hangong Garden (the title refers to the mother's beautiful balcany garden attached to the Kobayashi family's small, but nice, housing project apartment) certainly is worth a watch. It was also a change of pace for director Toshiaki Toyoda, being celebrated in this year's New York Asian Film Festival. It's more satirical and comical than the other listed family films. And for earlier cinematic dives into the Japanese famly we must consider, and bow to, the classic work of Yasujirō Ozu, whose work is on another level, as significant artistically as it is culturally.

A refreshing change of pace into bluntness and satire came in 1983, with Yoshimitsu Morita's generationally defining The Familly Game, an acid depiction of gender power lines and the way small middle class Japanese families really worked.

All these post-Ozu movies are different in style, focus and quality; they just all involve modern day urban Japanese families. Some of them, like Ozu, try to deal with subtle fluctuations in famiily as Still Walking does- Hanging Garden certainly does not do that. They all tend to shrink in significance when we compare them with the Ozu classics. But if you want to say a family is not what it seems on the surface or what its members tell each other, this is a general theme linking numerous films. (This may flow naturally out of Japanese culture's enigmatic and concealing aspect, its emphasis on shame, respect,and image.)

The Japan Society description of Hanging Garden for its 2010 presentation was "Family as a nightmare and a fount of terror, discord and disquiet: that was his [Toyoda's] idea." This quality may be most hilighted not by any one subplot but by the ever-present swirling, rocking movements of the camera of dp Kenji Maki . The Japan Society blurb goes on to describe the family members one by one. First the mother, Eriko (Kyoko Koizumi), "cheerful and subservient on the surface but full of murderous rage and dying inside." Next the father, salaryman Takashi (Itsuji Itao), "a bland corporate drone driven by the dark forces below his belt." (We learn that Eriko chose him and seduced him.) Then the children, "the sulky and socially withdrawn son Ko (Masahiro Hirota), not much of an A-student in public but more studious with his private tutor when the door’s closed" (and often off to a love hotel). And teenage daughter Mana (Anne Suzuki), "an obsessive visitor and user of love hotels in a bizarre, frantic search for the origin of her own conception." Finally there is the "rather wicked chain-smoking grandmother…" the blurb concludes. She is Sacchan, Satoko Kinosaki (Michiyo Yasuda).

The film is somewhat a series of skits, linked by the fact the central character in each is a member of the Koyahashi family and may have to deceive other family members to do what he or she does independently. Even the grandma winds up in the love hotel at one point, though she (in an example of premature dementia?) cares nothing for the impression she makes.

Some of the provocative effects like that may titillate, at the cost of any feel of authenticity. Toyoda is a little too much in love with filming the love hotel. Hanging Garden may have been a ground-breaker, but it's not best in class. It's probably another example of Toyoda's variety, about which I can't say much yet, having only seen Transcending Dimensions, a more impressive film than this one. 9 Souls is pending.

Hanging Garden 空中庭園 ("Hanging Gardens"), 114 mins., opened in Tokyo Oct. 8, 2005; limited festival showings began with Sarajevo Aug. 23, 2006. Screened for this review as part of selected Fimmaker in Focus review of Toyoda's past and present work in the New York Asian Film Festival, Jul. 11-27, 2025. Showtimes
Fri, July 18
3:00 PM

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JO KOO AND KYLAN SO IN PAPA

PHILIP YUNG: PAPA 爸爸 (2024)

TEASER

The calm complexities of a life, even marked by a horrific event

"Inspired by true events," this haunting, complex, low-keyed Hong Kong portrait of a father with the patience of Job never asks whether the fifteen-year-old son Ming (Dylan So) who kills his young, beautiful wife Yin (Jo Koo) and their younger daughter Grace (Lainey Hung) with a meat cleaver, whether he is still worthy of his love. He only has to find a way. The film moves around in time, introducing the horrific event at the outset but not actually glimpsing it till much later, going back over earlier events like the man ruminating. As he seeks to understand we also try to. It's an approach that may lose some in the audience but that, with sympathy, may move closer to human thought and feeling than usual, away from drama and cheap effects toward everyday experience and the subtlety of a novel, or a suite of novels.

A unifying element is the 24/7 Hong Kong style cafe diner the couple start and jointly run. The wife was pretty and younger, Yuen (Sean Lau, in a remarkable performance) having decided to marry later than other members of his generation and his friends, but Yin is fully on board with it, and the affair has the feel of romance. None more so than when they wed, and their karaoke lark that same day, a moment he comes back to repeatedly.

Ming, the son, is judged to be mentally ill and after a trial is sent to a kind of psyciatric prison, though one that seemingly considers his release after only four years. We look in on the son much earlier when he is an ordinary and cheerful smaller boy. As a young teen he seems no different, quiet, bespectacled, curious, calm. What the family does not know is that he has been hearing voices telling him that overpopulation is causing the glaciers to melt and he kills the two people closest at hand to lower it. He goes out bloody and tries to add to the reduction by strangling someone on the street, but he isn't strong enough. He goes to a park and sitting there, calls 999 and reports that he has killed someone. We see him arrested there later.

You can say that the scenes here are sliced and diced, but it's all in the editing, which uses fragmented chronology to recreate a sensibility and a tormented awareness. The essence of this film is in the editing.

There is detail later about Ming's treatment at the psychiatric facility, and his responding well to medication. We get a feeling of Yin. It's a family of four and it seems a good humored family, no yelling, no pouting, as when Ming asks for a new cell phone that takes photographs and his father objects that multi-function gadgets are no bood and offers to buy him a camera, and he just says, "Never mind." This scene evokes a "memory" we have from Yuen's earlier days, in a camera shop when he buys a new digital camera and is excited about what it can do. But there are a number of ticketed chapters here, and even a chapter of the family cat, Carnation, who is what Ming takes most snaps of whe he gets a phone with a camera.

Later Papa reminds the boy, who has forgotten, that a snap of the four of them was done with a timer, because it was a digital camera. All these memories, all these interconnectons, as in a sensiboility, as in a life. But foremost remains the event from the pages of the Hong Kong press, an event that stunned the city and marks this man -- because this film is first of all about him, "Papa," of a family that is no more, destroyed by the son in a few minutes one night when he, he is saved perhaps, because he is where he so often is, at the cafe, working, when it happens. For Yuen there is always the question of why, why did you do this? Even though the boy gives that explanation, it remains incomprehensible. Later he will learn to say the mental illness did it. And then at another time, Yuen is trying to reconcile with the boy (to restore that little part of the family that remains), and asks that they not talk about that event at all now.

At the same time we also experience the deaths. We see the choosing of the coffins (Yuen asks if wife and daughter can be buried in the same one: they cannot), the funeral, meeting with friends and relatives and what the undertaker tells him it is and is not proper to say to visiting mourners (not "thank you," not "see you later").

Meanwhile Yuen, who is a "typical" inarticulate Hong Kong man who has little to say at any time, and makes no dramatic declarations after the murders, nonetheless is full of self-recriminaton at times for himself. And yet also his inarticulateness sometimes may be the best approach, and the most touching. He must recognize that his invovement with the 24/7 cafe makes him not the most hands-on of fathers. He might consider, though this is not mentioned, that they, he and his wife, might have recognized signs of something strange in their son, and had it looked to. But if your son is smart, bookish, intellectual, and withdrawn, do you suspect he's schizophrenic? You do not. Nonetheless the wish that things had gone differently causes the man to ruminate wistfully, and this is a governing principle of the many flashbacks. Yet they are also a neutral picture of events, not a fantasy retelling of them to suit an idea.

Yuen's stoicism breaks in a memorable scene after the tragedy when he hires an escort and then is robbed by her employers before anything happens. It is here unexpectedly that he gives in and is destroyed with prolongued weeping as guilt, regret, shame, and all the feelings bottled up in him come out.

Much of the film is fascinating and compulsively watchable as it slips imperceptibly and pleasureably around among present and past events. It seems to be finding too easy solutions sometimes in the latter segment, which is also marred by switching to another actor to play the more grownup Ming. But one can see why this has gotten a lot of attetion, including a review in Hollywood Reporter by Jordan Mintzer and one in Variety by Richard Kuipers. I was also impressed by the citizen review by Ong Chenghan in Letterboxd that calls the film " a profound journey of inner healing" that tells "a story about responsibility, loss and forgiveness in an extremely restrained and gentle way, allowing people to slowly understand the true appearance of 'love' between silence and recollection": this gets at some of the complexity of this great film for director Philip Yung and for the cast, especially lead actor Sean Lau.

Wikipedia

Papa 131 mins., premiered at Tokyo Oct. 31, 2024, also shown at Hong Kong and Udine. Screened for this review as part of the NYAFF (July 11-27 2025). Showtimes:
Special Screening
Saturday July 12, 6:00pm (Auditorium 4, LOOK Cinemas W57)
Saturday July 26, 3:30pm (Auditorium 4, LOOK Cinemas W57)

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TOSHIAKI TOYODA: 9 SOULS (2004)

A raucous, comedic, violent adventue

9 Souls, an eccentric action comedy thrill prison break tale, is one of the films on which Japanese director Toyiaki Toyada's reputaton is staked. It is part of the 2025 NYAFF series "In Focus" on his work. It shows nine fugitives, all of them convicted of murder or some other high crime, on flight from themselves in modern Japan. Bursting out of prison all at oncer, they commandeer a van from a strip club, planning to make it to a stash of counterfeit money a crazy inmate has revealed to them, and then find a home place to hang out. This does not turn out as planned, but there are many adventures.

9 Souls is essentially in two parts, the group one and the individual one. In the first the escapees are traveling together, and it seems crucial for them to stay that way. Every time they rush off to a new location they seem to leave someone running madly behind desperate not to be abandoned, and this becomes a "thing" typical of this film, its rather combination of comedy and intense action. In the second part the men go off on their own, and individualized adventures result. The stage is set for this by introducing each "soul" with a title card at the outset with crime and sentence: murderer, escape artist, legendary violent biker, dwarf porn king, drug pusher on US naval base, mad bomber, "general loose canon," "born delinquent," father killer."

The essence of the thing is that this is a buddy picture where the escapees work as a team, and the absurdity of that with men such as this, whose only point in common is that they were jailbirds and whose feuds with their own gangs are well known. Yet they do help each other, starting with their escape. There is panbache in the way this opebing scene is handled: with camera at ground level, we just suddenly see a big hole in the ground and the men climb out of it one by one.

From the get-go (nine prisoners escaping at once) 9 Souls is not in any way a realistic treatment of the prison escape theme. So if that is what you are looking for, you must look elsewhere. This is first of all an entertainment, one as full of energy and invention as you could want, but requiring a willing suspension of disbelief at all times. In crafting a crime escape film involving nine criminals, the filmmakers are looking for something joyous and collective, somewhat on the order of the American Ocean's Eleven films but wilder and more criminal.

There are lots of laughs, but there are buckets of blood shed as well. It's not that there is no sense of danger, only that the rules are not the usual ones. Look for lots of onscreen action--not subtle character portrayal. A tour de force.

9 Souls (ナイン・ソウルズ, Nain Souruzu), 119 mins., opened in Japan Jul. 31, 2003 but premiered at Toronto Sept. 12; also Toronto, Pusan, Friberg, Philadelphia. Japan Cuts debut 2012. Screened for this review as part of the Jul. 11-17, 2025 Japan Cuts. SCHEDULE:
Sunday July 20, 3:15pm
LOOK Cinemas W57

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SUKHEE ARIUNBYAMBA IN TRAVESTY

BAATAR BATSUKH: TRAVESTY (2024)

Batsukh has crafted an atmospheric crime story out of the minimal material of the Mongolian outback, making great use, tactical but also visual, of the spaces and the stark structures that sparsely inhabit them. (The director was also the cinematographer, as for his previous films.) A hospital is on the square, which for all we can tell is empty, on a square, also, visibly empty provide the scene. A few people inhabit it. The film iself is an ingenious filling up of empty spaces as well. The filmmaker has a strong pollitical bent and aims for nothing so much as to scold the government for its indifference to the people and its general incompetence.

A disgruntled kid occupies the hospital. He announces he is holding the 19 patients hostage and demanding a ransom. of 1 billion Mongolian tugrik a person. The tension is at a fevrer pitch when he threatens to kill one prisoner an hour until the ransom money is paid. A police captain is summoned from the city, Davaa (Sukhee Ariunbyamba), who has authority and takes charge, except that he has no authority over anybody and none of the local police and officials care about the situation. Captain Davaa appeals to town, then city, then nation, then state, and the catch is that as he goes higher, the human being is more petty, cowardly, selfish, and irresponsible. No one has as much chutzpah or soul as Davaa, back where it all started. That is the point. Some writing about this film criticize it for its over-politicization of the plot. But that is the point. This film is a transsparent attack on the government. There is some beauty in the simiplicity of it. We get a picdture of how plain things may see to you if you live in Mongolia, or this remote a part of it.

Some of the scenes take place in the local police station, which in addition to being ostensible headquqrters for the hostage negotiations, winds up hosting a woman about the give birth, and a discheveled man who is her husband, and also the local math teacher. The only doctor in the beseiged hosital is allowed out to attend the pregnant woman, and gives some picture of what is going on.

It's also fun that what takes place in the plot parallels what the filmmaker himself is doing, which is faking us out. Spoiler alert: the big takeover of the hospital for ransom isn't. The victimes that get their heads blown apart don't. Spoiler alert: it's just a kid, with an automatic weapon nd a bold pln. LIkewise with Travesty. The filmkaker's aim is to use minimal means to keep us entertined and think we're seeing a bold rural crime played out. With minimal means. What stand out here are the visuals, which are striking, and make good use of the natural environment, half city, half desert. Some of the acting is not bad either. This was pointed out in the Screen Daily review by Nikki Baughan, who adds that for locals, the presence of Mongolian pop star Daviadasha, aka Ariunbold Ganbold, in the role of Bayraa also added flavor. But she correctly explains the central role of the city cop who comes in and dominatersthe scene. "The big city cop in the provincial town is a well-used trope, and Sukhee plays it effectively," she writes, "his gruff, world-weary demeanour and casual attitude suggesting that his superior authority can outwit these outback hicks." That changes a bit when he discovers that his adversary in the hospital has the same criticisms of the government as he does, and (spoiler alert again) they arrive at an amicable agreement.

An enjoyable and absorbing film with striking visuals.

Travesty, 78 mins., premiered at Busan Oct. 3, 2024. Screened for this review as part of the Jul. 11-27, 2025 New York Asian Film Festival. Showtime:
aturday July 26, 4:00pm
SVA Theatre
2025 NYAFF Uncaged Award Nominee. Intro and Q&A with director Baatar Batsukh and producers Alexa Khan and Trevor Doyle

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MARIS RACAL IN SUNSHINE

ANTOINETTE JADAONE: SUNSHINE (2024)

TRAILER

An unwanted pregnancy in the Philippines

Maris Racal stars in the film, marking her third collaboration with Jadaone, a director popular on multiple levels in the Philippines. The story follows a young Filapina Olympic aspirant gymnast who discovers she is pregnant on the week of the national team tryouts. On her way to a seller of illegal abortion drugs, she meets a mysterious girl (Annika Co) who eerily talks and thinks like her. The device the director acknowledges is based on Taika Waititi's Jojo Rabbit, but not used as extensively. It provides a kind of wall against coming too close to a sitation that's harsh even though it's idealized.

This is an issue picture with an urgency because this is a conservative and Catholic country where abortion is illegal and there are thousands of unwanted teenage prenancies. Perhaps the film is only as good as the degree to which young women can identify with Maris Racal as Sunshine and the rest of the public can sympathize with her plight and her solution. Ordinary Filapina girls may aspire to being like Sunshine, especially after the gymnast Carlos Yulo became a multi-gold medalist. Not all will directly identify with an elite athlete. Maris Racal is convincing enough. She performs her streamer-swirling routines convincingly and has the fresh, perfect look of a world class gymnist.

Sunshine falls doing her routine and knows something is wrong. Quite soon she guesses, and buys two pregnancy tests of different brands to avoid a wrong result (a tip from someone). Things move fast after that. Her irresponsible teen boyfriend (Elijah Canlas) is a complete asshole. On the street she buys an abortion pill for vaginal insertion; we don't know what it is but when she takes it where she goes to a sleazy sex hotel for a prescribed 12-hour fast, excruciating pain leads her to the hospital. When she wakes up she has lucked out by getting "Dr. Helena," an OB-GYN doctor who clearly runs her own sub rosa abortion clinic on the side, and who treatsher for free. At the end of the film, Sunshine has returned to training and enters competition.

Perhaps this film compromises too much to make its unpalatable topic palatable, even as for many in the country nothing will really achieve that.

For some reason this made me think of the great Brazilian movies about the lives of street kids in the cities and favelas, Pixote, Ciudade de Deus and all the others, so full of life. Perhaps the Philippines isn't much like that in detail, but it seems to have some of the same vibracy and warmth. and we feel that a little bit in one sequence of Sunshine where the protagonist is running with her sister (who has a small baby always in tow), has been talking to her JoJo Rabbit-esque child doppelganger, and has discovered her young lesbian friend is pregnant by her uncle. But most of the time she has it pretty easy, despite the imminent threat to her Olympic career, and we are a little too much protected from the violence and disorder of a world with a lot of poverty, many pregnant unmarried girls, and illegal abortion.

But to be critical of an issue picture that may be something of a voice in the wilderness is, as I've noted before, how Mike D'Angelo described Eiiza Hittman's 2019 Never Rarely Sometimes Always: "A film that offers virtually nothing but compassion, which makes it all but impossible to criticize without seeming downright heartless."

THREE SHORT FILMS ('RESURRECTION TRILOGY') BY TOSHIAKI TOYODA: WOLF'S CALLING, DAY OF DESTRUCTION, GO SEPPUKU YOURSELVES

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TOSHIAKI TOYODA

Toyoda's two arrests, in 2005 for drugs (just before Hanging Garden was released), and then in 2019 for possession of a firearm (an antique one), both strongly affected him in the rigid world of Japanese culture and led to blacklisting by the local cinema industry, and to his own intense anger. After the 2005 arrest he laid low and did not make another film for four years. The three short and mid-length films included in the 2025 NYAFF, Wolf's Calling (2019), Day of Destruction (2020) and Go Seppuku Yourselves (2021), known as his "Resurrection Trilogy," reveal his anger while having other symbolic meanings - and showing off his mastery as a filmmaker in a particularly pungent way. After I watched Day of Destruction, with good sound (and the sound is overwhelming and wonderful), I finally started to grok the guy, to see why he has a cult following of people here who collect his Blu-ray sets.

The festival calls these three "passionate metaphorical tomes on society, exile, death, and resurrection." They are also deeply Japanese yet in revolt against what is represented as the rigidity and the simplicity of the culture. They are critiques of it and remarks on his own treatment by Toyoda, But they're also works that revel in the medium.

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WOLF'S CALLING 狼煙が呼ぶ (2019)

It has been remarked that Toyoda is great with music, and sound and revels in them. The clanging metallic sounds of the ancient instruments that ring out through much of Wolf's Calling ( composed by the Edo punk band Seppuku Pistols) echo in the mind for a long time after watching it. The old-sounding Japanese music is deep-penetrating. It speaks to something deep within us that we did not even know was there. (I found and reveled in the sound of Japanese Noh drama when I was no more than around 7 or 8 years old.).

This film refers to the filmmaker's arrest for 'possession of firearms', no doubt. It is an intense, resonant, wonderful recreation of an imagined moment in a flashback, as it were. A contemporary woman, perhaps at a new house, new to her, a handsome, good sized one perhaps on the edge of a forest, goes to the wooden attic, finds a wooden box, unwraps from its cloth an old, worn and discolored pistol.

In the main sequence a man in traditional garb goes by signs of an ancient wolf up a long stairway in a wood to a magnificent old temple or fortress (Mt. Resurrection - Wolf Shrine). Men gather, all in samurai attire, wearing double swords, ready. Several draw their swords. The air is thick with aggression and machismo. Down the hill men in straw hats assemble - farmers, gathered to fight. The farmers, in motley, very motley attire, carry arms, rifles. At the sight of this, the leader of the group from the knightly class up above reaches into his kimono slowly. There is an ominous sound. He draws out the pistol, shiny and new, ready to be used. The ugly modern weapon must be used, though it pushes out the honorable weapoon of bravery and skill, the sword of the samurai. Toyoda is also hinting that Japan's fascistic modern policing system that harrassed him over an antique firearm is ignoble.

After the film comes back to the woman in the attic with the old pistol in her hand and the immense clanging music of antique Japanese percussive instruments of Seppuku Pistols, there are "faux" credits, like the "faux" credits at the end of Ryan Coogler's amazing new film Sinners with the surprise "envoi" by the Chicago blues great, Buddy Guy. But this time it is a young man in trditional Japanese garb, pacing the heights overlooking the skyline of a great city - Tokyo - looking down, as it were, on the present with a cold eye, nothing more. It may feel a little anticlimactic, but it reasserts the presence of the past over all this expanse of vagueness and light: what is this world?

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THE DAY OF DESTRUCTION 破壊の日(2020)

The Day of Destruction opens with a prelude in black and white. There is a man who comes with permission to enter a closed off tunnel where there is a "monster," the guard jokes, and it has put the all out of work. "Don't you have a mask?" the gatekeeper asks. "Your back will bend," he smiles. WE actually follow him as he walks the entire length of the mine. At the end is a demon. The sparse dialogue wavors between superstition and contemporary event. The punk band lyrics cry out with desperation and irony. Example: "Hey Siri, how much longer must I put up with this? OK Google, which part of this is OK? Would self-restraint for 10 more years be enough?Would self-restraint for 100 more years be enough? If you think you're alive, prove it now."" The walk through this dark looming echoing tunnel is that long look, a minute that seems like an hour, an hour that seems like a minute. It's a strange, extended moment as ominous and barrier-pushing in its way as Eraserhead.

It's understood that the film was initially conceived as a commentary on the 2020 Tokyo Olympics (and no doubt the planned repression to enable them), but was adapted to address the COVID-19 pandemic during its production. The background is that a demon is born in the depths of a mine in a remote, rural village. This is where we are. Villagers have prayed at a local shrine to placate the demon, but he nonetheless finds a vessel in a man whose sister is suffering from a mysterious new disease. He is practitioner of Shugendo, an esoteric branch of Buddhism whose practioners gain supernatural power and save themselves and the masses by conducting religious training while treading through steep mountain ranges. (Here, it's a tunnel.)

But with this background, this 56-minute film is best seen primarily as simply an immersive audiovisual experience. It can be taken as an objection to how COVID was handled by authorities, the use by power of ominous fear of all we don't understand. It can also be seen as an outcry about how corrupt the world is and how need it is in purification. Day of Destruction harks back to some of the very varied Toyoda's earlier, rawer material and is billed by some a a "horror" film. But it's more a philosophical cry of rage.

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GO SEPPUKU YOURSELVES 全員切腹 (2021)

This one 25 minutes long is set in a part of the samurai era when an epidemic, or plague, is happening. A geisha walks through the village in the opening scene and the camera follows her from behind. When it gets up to her face, there is only an oni demon mask there. And then she slices her finger off.

Wells are polluted, and scapegoats are sought, though wise men say it can only be an oni, a demon, that could cause such widespread harm. Local officials seek human scapegoats and an outsider, and a cynical and angry young wandering samurai called Raikan (Yosuke Kubozuka) is chosen as a scapegoat, accused of poisoning the wells, and ordered to commit seppuku. "Go seppuku yourselves" (all commit seppuku) is something he says, near the end of a bold, bitter speech lashing out at the corrupt governors, ending with his committing seppuku, ritually disemboweling himself, and then being beheaded by Toyoda regular Kiyohiko Shibukawa.

It's a stunning performance by Kubozuka, ot only the increasigly intense, theatrical speech, but watching the facial expressions as he moves the knife around in his intenstines, and altogether a memorably bitter, cynical, fearless character: even when he first appears, his first words are, "I am a samurai, I kill people for a for a living"; So he is not just condemning the corrupt officials, but also the samurai code itself under which he has lived for years. Though shorter than the middle film, it may be the most memorable, at least for the character of Raikon. It ends with full-on punk music by the groups utilized differently before, perhaps intentionally to undercut the "period" flavor.

The pent-up rage and creativity exhibited in these three shorter films by Toshiaki Royoda are a joy and, as I said, showed me what was going on when people became cult fans of his work. I have still not been able to watch all his films, but I'll be looking for them.

Wolf Calling, 17 mins., Day of Destruction 56 mins., Go Seppuku Yourselves 25 mins., released in 2019, 2020, and 2021, where screened for these reviews as part of the New York Asian Film Festival, Jul. 11-27, 2025.

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ANTHONY WONG

SEN LAM, ANTONIO TAM: VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH 不赦之罪 (2024)

Christian anguish and hypocrisy in Hong Kong

This anguished and austere drama about guilt and forgiveness seems at first to be veering almost into Carl Dreyer territory. But it's plot line is more lurid than that, and it indulges in more modern formal experimentation - time shifts and sudden flashbacks. It pushes toward the lurid when it gets to the moment when the repentant young rapist Chan Taz Lok (George Au) goes up to be baptized by Pastor Paul Leung (Anthony Perry Wong), father of. the girl,who subsequently committed suicide, and Pastor Leung tries to drown him.

The other factors are the Pastor's wife (Louisa So), who's lost her faith. (Pastor Leung merely switched to a more born-again sect, apparently). And of course the daughter, Ching (Sheena Chan). And we find out about her from flashbacks. Apparently the Pastor and his grim wife never learn how reprehensible their daughter was, that she provoked Lok, had him send shots of his genitals and then exposed him; or that Lok, a classmate, was a sensitive kid, an artist who is always drawing, who was bullied and beaten by other boys at the school. On the other hand we never get a good look at the rape. And we don't learn the steps that led to her suicide, but it seems not simply a reacrtion to being raped.

Hayley Scanlon in his Windows on Worlds review of this film describes the truths it unravels. He says it examines whether the pastor "is merely a hypocrite who expounds on 'the beauty of suffering,'" (he's written a pamphlet on that) while "wallowing in his grief" but unable to practice what he preaches. As Scanlon puts it, we learn that the pastor's "religiosity" and its "oppressive qualities and implacable rigidity also contributed to his daughter’s death," and for him shifting all the blame to Lok is just an escape - one his wife didn't have, hence her loss of faith.

This is a lot to unlock in a film of only moderate length, and the filmmakers' exposition is lacikng at some points. What exactly did Lok do prison time for and how did it come about? Does the pastor ever find out more of the truth? Apparently not, because he never accepts Lok's revelation that he is learning to forgive the girl.

This is a strong performance by Anhony Wong, but if anything George Lau as the boy has a better role. He seeks salvation in the church and really forgives. The actor cast for the role is actually unusually pure looking, and exudes a rawness that jumps off the screen, making him a counterweight for the powerful Wong. You almost come out of the film thinking the girl raped him. It's an intense role for Wong, but he's a bit stiff, harsh, and shrill. And it's not clear how sympathetic he's meant to be. If as little as it seems, he's not a very three-dimensioonal character. But then Carl Dreyer characters can seem like that too. This genre of religious torment drama isn't for everyone. This certainly takes us somewhere Hong Kong cinema doesn't usually go.

Valley of the Shadow of Death 不赦之罪 ("mortal sin"), 84 mins., premiered at Tokyo Oct. 31, 2024, showing also at HogKong April 2025 IT reportedly won the Keep Rolling, Keep Running program hosted by the Federation of Hong Kong Filmmakers, was nominated for the Firebird Award at the Hong Kong and was featured in the Asian Future competition at Tokyo. Screened for this review as part of the 2025 New York Asian Film Festival. Showtime:
Sunday July 13, 3:30pm
Film at Lincoln Center
Intro and Q&A with directors Jeffrey Lam Sen, Antonio Tam and actor George Au.

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GEORGE AU