NY ASIAN FILM FESTIVAL July 15-28, 2022

THE SALES GIRL Худалдагч охин (Janchivdorj Sengedorj, Mongolia, 2021)

A delightful, confident, accomplished film about a girl who finds confidence and beauty through subbing as clerk at a sex shop and meeting regularly with its fascinating lady owner. The young star won the acting prize at the Osaka premiere; the older one is memorable too. In an obscure country in an obscure language, such an accomplished and witty director.

NYAFF SHOWTIMES:
Thursday, July 28
6:30 PM at the Walter Reade Theater
Q&A with Janchivdorj Sengedorj

Dealing with Dad (Tom Huang, US, 2022)

This rare and valuable addition is about Asian Americans, adult siblings in a Chinese family who rally to resolve their father's severe depression even though he is an overbearing, abusive asshole they have to admit is nicer mentally ill. Huang, dealing obliquely with his own family experiences, nicely steers a path between humor and truth.

Showed July 15 at the Walter Reade Theater, Lincoln Center.

The Thieves 도둑들 (Choi Dong-hoon 2012)

A high-speed, jokey Korean caper film from 2012 is reportedly the country's biggest box office ever. This Ocean's Eleven-style collective Chinese+Korean gang effort to steal a diamond worth twenty or thirty million from the vault of a casino shows the Korean film industry was more than able to produce such slick, complicated crowd-pleasers, exciting and sexy too.

NYAFF SHOWTIMES:
Sunday Jul 31, 1:00pm
Asia Society
Director Choi Dong-hoon will attend the screening.

Reviewing the 2022 New York Asian Film Festival

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SON SUKKU AND JEON JONG-SEO IN NOTHING SERIOUS

NYAFF intro trailer

It continues till next Thursday July 28th. Here are some favorites.

Wei Shujun's RIPPLES OF LIFE, in three chapters, is grand, ambitious filmmaking - and I think he carried it off. For cinephiles that might be the one to see. THE THIEVES, a Korean revival from ten years ago, the casino caper flick to end all casino caper flicks, impossible to follow, is extremely entertaining.

Other smaller films gave me a lot of pleasure. INTIMATE STRANGER from Japan by a woman director features a middle-aged woman in a sexy starring role; it's an elegant psychological horror genre film about a creepy relationship with an attractive young man. GROWN-UPS is stylish and experimental in style, about students living on their own whose relationship gets complicated when she becomes pregnant. (Also Japan.) RIBBON is that rarity, a look at the pandemic - from the POV of a Japanese female art student.

THE SALES GIRL is a girl's coming of age by befriending the owner of a sex shop: I had no idea they made such good films in Mongolia, or would have such a sly sense of humor!

NOTHING SERIOUS and PERHAPS LOVE are two different kinds of rom-coms from Korea that are sophisticated and delightful. I guess the Taiwanese MAMA BOY is coming-of-age-cum-sex comedy. The mom-dominated man finally breaks out with a woman but when he goes to the brothel it's really the attractive older madam he hankers after. The pleasure here is of a filmmaker going his own way, breaking away from the mold but remaining richly entertaining and fun.

Finally, DEALING WITH DAD is a revealing look at a Chinese American family. The filmmaker has a lot to say, and unlike other movies in this genre, there is nothing sentimental or sugarcoated. I was shocked and put off at first, but there is a lot of love and a lot of loyalty in this family, and given the meanness of the dad when he gets over his depression, a lot of forgiveness. All that softens the harsh honesty.

Not a single wuxia movie or a historical one. Asian films are associated with that in the West, but there's so much else going on. Now, Park Chan-wook in DECISION TO LEAVE (which I'm interested to see) has mixed police procedural with romance, and he won the director prize at Cannes for it. The New York Asian Film Festival focuses on the smaller gems, the fascinating newcomers. Among these would be, for instance, Jigme Trinley, the son of leading Tibetan auteur Pema Tseden, whose ONE AND FOUR, a tense, ironic tough-guy thriller in a very frigid climate, like THE SALES GIRL from Mongolia shows how some excellent films are being made in very obscure places. Thank digital, smart phones, the internet: movies and movie-making are alive and well in Asia.

Links to the reviews:
Angry Son 世界は僕らに気づかない (Kasho Iizuka, Japan, 2022)
Before Next Spring 如果有一天我将会离开你 (Li Gen, China, 2021)
Big Night!(Jun Robles Lana, Philippines, 2021)
Broken Commandment 破戒 (Kazuo Maeda, Japan, 2022)
Confession 자백 (YOON Jong-seok, South Korea 2022)
Dealing with Dad (Tom Huang, US, 2022)
Finding Bliss: Fire and Ice - The Director's Cut ]尋找極致的喜悅：火與冰 (Kim Chan, Dee Lam, Hong Kong, 2022)
Funeral, The 頭七 (Dan-Guei Shen, Taiwan, 2022)
Girl on the Bulldozer, The 불도저에 탄 소녀 (Park Ri-woong, South Korea, 2022
Grown-Ups わたし達はおとな (Takuya Kato, Japan 2022)
Happy Together 春光乍洩 (Wong Kar-wai, Hong Kong 1997)
I Am More 모어 (Lee Il-ha, South Korea, 2021)
Intimate Stranger 親密な他人 (Mayu Nakamura, Japan 2021)
Legendary in Action!]大俠 Action！ (Justin Cheung, Li Ho, Hong Kong, 2022)
Lesson in Murder 死刑にいたる病 (Kazuya Shiraishi, Japan, 2022)
Life for Sale 售命 (Tom Teng, Taiwan 2021)
#LookAtMe (Ken Kwek, Singapore, 2022)
Mama Boy 初戀慢半拍 (Arvin Chen, Taiwan 2022)
Manchurian Tiger 东北虎 (Geng Jun 2021)
Nothing Serious 연애 빠진 로맨스 (Jeong Ga-young , South Korea 2021)
Offbeat Cops 異動辞令は音楽隊！(Eiji Uchia, Japan, 2022)
One and Four一个和四个 (Jigme Trinley, China, 2021)
Ox-Head Village 牛首村 (Takashi Shimizu, Japan, 2022)
Perhaps Love 장르만 로맨스 (Cho Eun-ji, South Korea, 2022)
Ribbon (Non, Japan, 2022)
Ripples of Life 永安镇故事集 (Wei Shujun China 2021)
Sales Girl, The Худалдагч охин (Janchivdorj Sengedorj, Mongolia, 2021)
Shin Ultraman シン・ウルトラマン(Shinji Higuchi Japan 2022)
Thieves, The 도둑들 (Choi Dong-hoon 2012)

2022 NYAFF Awards.

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BAYARTSETSEQ BAYANGEREL AND DULGUUN BAYASQALAN IN THE SALES GIRL

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The awards have been announced for the summer 2022 New York Asian Film Festival.

Anderson Le unveiled the Uncaged Award for Best Feature Film, which went to THE SALES GIRL from Janchivdorj Sengedorj (Mongolia, 2021).

Two audience awards were split between Cho Eun-ji’s PERNAPS LOVE (South Korea, 2022) and Coba Cheng’s CHILLI LAUGH STORY` (Hong Kong, 2022).

Special Mention for Technical Achievement went to Jigme Tringley’s ONE AND FOUR (China, 2021), the chilly Tibetan mountain actioner.

Special Mention for Acting went to yao for his performance as the twin brothers in Ken Kwek’s #LOOKATME (Singapore, 2022): "From Gen-Z frivolity to all manner of abuse in Singapore's unjust system against the LGBTQ community, yao's stellar performances strengthen the film as an agent of political and cultural change in Singapore," said the jury statement.

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The New York Asian Film Festival was co-presented by the New York Asian Film Foundation and Film at Lincoln Center in association with Asia Society and took place from July 15–28, 2022 at FLC’s Walter Reade Theater (165 West 65th Street), and on July 23 and July 28–31 at Asia Society (725 Park Avenue). It was curated by executive director Samuel Jamier, associate director Claire Marty, and programmers David Wilentz, Karen Severns, Koichi Mori, and Jenny Lin.

More about personalities and films from the 2022 NYAFF awards event:

NYAFF’s veritable blizzard of guests brought filmmakers to nearly every screening, including Hong Kong cultural icon Josie Ho, who presented her inspiring musical documentary Finding Bliss: Fire and Ice—The Director's Cut, along with two of her earlier key films; legendary J-Horror maestro Takashi Shimizu, who received NYAFF’s 2022 Screen International Star Asia Lifetime Achievement Award and presented his spine-tingling new opus Ox-Head Village; Screen International Star Asia Award winner Hiroshi Abe, who appeared with director Eiji Uchida for the world premiere of midlife redemption dramedy Offbeat Cops; inaugural Best from the East honoree Ryu Seung-Ryong, star of Cho Eun-ji’s poignant screwball comedy Perhaps Love; NYAFF Daniel A. Craft Award for Excellence in Action Cinema awardee Jang Hyuk, star of two films by Choi Jae-hun, The Killer and The Swordsman; Screen International Rising Star Asia Award winner Urassaya “Yaya” Sperbund, who headlined director Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit’s NYAFF 2022 Opening Film Fast & Feel Love with star Nat Kitcharit; Screen International Rising Star Asia Award winner Kim Hye- yoon, the lead in Park Ri-woong’s The Girl on a Bulldozer; Shin Ultraman director Shinji Higuchi and producer Tomoya Nishino; I Am More director Lee Il-ha and glamorous drag queen-ballerina More; Big Night! director Jun Robles Lana and star Christian Bables; #LookAtMe director Ken Kwek, producer Pam Oei and star yao (formerly Thomas Pang); Confession director Yoon Jong-seok; Fire on the Plain director Zhang Ji; Next Door director Yeom Ji-ho; rapper-actor Kyle Chin (“Son of Paper”); Dealing with Dad director Tom Huang; Dennis Liu creator of Raising Dion; and Doris Yeung, director, producer and founder of CinemAsia Film Festival.