The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business
Thirteen independent films from across Asia, including the top winners at various international film festivals and a Chinese film featuring a popular action star in an unusual role, will be screened at the Shangri-La Plaza mall this week as part of Asia on Screen 2015. The second edition of this premiere Asian film festival, to be held at the Shang Cineplex from May 8 to 12, is presented by the Asia Society Philippines and Security Bank, in partnership with the Film Development Council of the Philippine and Shangri-La Plaza.
Leading the festival lineup is Iran’s A Separation, which won the Golden Bear at the 2011 Berlin Film Festival and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2012. It’s about married middle-class couple Nader and Simin, who are divided on important decisions for their family. This compels them to seek a divorce, and the conflicts that arise following their separation lead to far greater consequences than both of them have imagined.
Joining A Separation is Cambodia’s The Missing Picture, which earned the top prize at the Un Certain Regard section of the 2013 Cannes Film Festival and an Oscar nomination as Best Foreign Language Film in 2014. In this documentary, filmmaker Rithy Panh uses clay figures, archival footage and his narration to recreate the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge regime in the mid-to-late 1970s.
South Korea joins the festival with two films: Confessions of Murder, about a police officer who returns to chasing a serial killer he failed to capture 15 years ago following the publication of a novel claiming responsibility for that killer’s crimes; and All About My Wife, about a husband who hires a “seduction expert” to seduce his wife into divorcing him after he gets tired of her complaining and nagging.
Two Chinese movies are also in the lineup: Back to 1942, which chronicles the journeys of a man named Master Fan and his family as they struggle to survive a famine and China’s war with Japan; and Ocean Heaven, which stars Jet Li in his first full dramatic role as aquarium worker Xue Chang, who struggles to raise his 21-year-old autistic son on his own.
A boy believed to bring bad luck to everyone is the protagonist of Australia’s The Rocket. After leading his family and two friends in a calamity-filled, but successful journey to Laos to find a new home, the boy proves that he’s not bad luck by building a giant rocket and entering it to the most exciting and dangerous competition of the year: the Rocket Festival.
Bollywood also joins the festival with Taare Zameen Par (Like Stars on Earth), which stars Indian superstar Aamir Khan and explores dyslexia among children by following a boy and his new art teacher who sees beyond the boy’s laziness and troublesome ways; and The Good Road, about a seven-year-old boy who, after he was accidentally separated from his parents, finds himself in the care of truck driver Pappu and his assistant Shaukat, who are both operating just beyond the law.
Another must-watch is Japan’s Like Father, Like Son, which won the Jury Prize at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival. The film chronicles Ryota Nonomiya’s choice between his biological son and the son he has raised after he finds out that they were switched at birth.
Indonesia is represented by Sang Penari (The Dancer), which centers on Rasus and gifted dancer Srintilm, who fall in love during their teenage years. Cultural and political forces have threated to separate them and the question remains: Will their great love survive?
And last, but not least, the Philippines offers two films. The first is the 2014 Cinemalaya Independent Film Festival New Breed entry Mariquina, which tells the story of a woman named Imelda and her journey to understanding her father Romeo’s past following his death. The rise, fall, and revival of Marikina City’s shoemaking industry is also unraveled, along with Imelda and her father’s story.
The second is Niño, which was first screened at the 2011 Cinemalaya Independent Film Festival and for which stage actress Shamaine Centenera-Buencamino won the Best Supporting Actress prize at the 2012 Asian Film Awards. The film focuses on a once-prominent family whose economic woes move it to consider selling its ancestral home, as well as explores love-hate relations in extended families.