Note: Asia in Cinema is a media partner of this year’s Five Flavours Film Festival. See the full lineup of the festival here. 

The Five Flavours Film Festival in Poland announced the full lineup for its 12th edition (November 15-22, 2018) today.

This year’s New Asian Cinema Competition features 11 films from across the region, including Locarno selections A Land Imagined (幻土) and Suburban Birds (郊區的鳥), Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit’s Die Tomorrow, Yang Mingming’s Girls Always Happy (柔情史) and Nam Ron’s One Two Jaga.

“While selecting the titles for the New Asian Cinema competition section, we took several things into consideration: whether the main theme of the films reflect contemporary social phenomenon in Southeast and East Asian countries, how filmmakers use the language of the medium and incorporate film form into narratives in a smart and surprising way, as well as new ways filmmakers use genre cinema and translate its rules onto the reality they know,” says festival programmer Maja Korbecka.

Korbecka added that the team also put a special focus on Southeast Asian films because it’s rare to see them on Polish screens.

The winner of the competition will be picked by a People’s Jury, comprised of 11 Asian cinema fans who are non-professionals in the film field. In addition to deciding the winners, the People’s Jury will also attend lectures during the festival and take part in discussions with festival guests.

In addition to the previously announced Asian Cinerama Road Show in association with the Asian Film Awards, the festival will also have an animation section – featuring films such as China’s The Guardian (大護法), Cambodia’s Funan, Taiwan’s On Happiness Road (幸福路上) and Japan’s Violence Voyager (バイオレンス・ボイジャー) – as well as special screenings of Ten Years Thailand, Dante Lam’s Operation Red Sea (紅海行動), Shinya Taukamoto’s Killing (斬、) and two episodes from HBO Asia original series Folklore.

The classics section features three films: Eiichi Yamamoto’s Belladonna of Sadness (哀しみのベラドンナ), Wang Shaudi’s Grandma and Her Ghosts (魔法阿媽) and Chang Tso-chi’s The Best of Times (美麗時光).

The festival will bookend with Feng Xiaogang’s Youth (芳華) – part of the Asian Cinerama program – as the opening film and close with On Happiness Road.

12th Annual Five Flavours Film Festival – New Asian Cinema Competition full line-up

A Land Imagined (Yeo Siew Hua)
Suburban Birds (Qiu Sheng)
Die Tomorrow (Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit)
Girls Always Happy (Yang Mingming)
One Two Jaga (Nam Ron)
Father To Son (范保德) (Hsiao Ya-chuan)
In the Life of Music (Caylee So, Sok Visal)
Nervous Translation (Shireen Seno)
No. 1 Chung Ying Street (中英街一號) (Derek Chiu)
River’s Edge (リバーズ・エッジ) (Isao Yukisada)
Song Lang (Leon Quang Le)