April

France, Italy, Georgia / 2024 / 134 min
Director：Dea KULUMBEGASHVILI

In Georgia, though the law permits abortion at twelve weeks, social and political pressure has effectively criminalized it. This film depicts a gynecologist who works at great risk, driven only by her sense of duty, treating and performing surgery on women in their homes who have been left with no other choice. Social and psychological alienation progressively gnaw away at her being. The surreal depiction of this, in its intensity and precision, is categorically devastating.

Dea Kulumbegashvili’s second feature film, following on “Beginning,” which received a Cannes label at the 2020 Cannes Film Festival (canceled due to the pandemic) and won the Best Film award at the San Sebastian Film Festival in the same year. This film premiered in competition at the Venice Film Festival, where it won the Special Jury Prize.

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Happy Holidays

Palestine, Germany, France, Italy, Qatar / 2024 / 123 min
Director：Scandar COPTI

The story of a Palestinian family living in Haifa, Israel. The film is divided into four chapters, separate but intertwined, that each focus on a different member of the family. At the same time they form a set of variations that take as their theme how state, society and culture impose their control and how that pressure changes and destroys people’s lives on a personal level. Honing in on the conditions and human relationships of a single family, from the core unit and extending out the deeper cultural political background of ethnicity, nation and gender is revealed to us, encompassing not only the divisions between Palestinians and Israelis in Israel, but also military nationalism and limits placed on women by the patriarchy. The second feature film (first as sole director) by Palestinian director Scander Copti, who won the Camera d'Or Special Mention at the Cannes Film Festival in 2009 for his film “Ajami,” co-directed with Israeli director Yaron Shani. ”Happy Holidays” was screened in the Orizzonti section of the Venice Film Festival, where it won the award for Best Original Screenplay.

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SANTOSH ★

India, UK, Germany, France / 2024 / 127 min
Director：Sandhya SURI

When Santosh’s husband is killed in the line of duty, a government policy for widows allows her to assume his job as police officer. As she adjusts to the unfamiliar role, she soon finds herself immersed in and compelled to navigate the outdated practices of policing, which are sexist, corrupt, and rife with both power struggles and the social divisions of caste and religion. Under the direction of an experienced and charismatic female police officer, Inspector Sharma, Santosh is tasked with investigating the death of a young "untouchable" girl who was raped, murdered and dumped in a local well. At first she sees her superior as an inspiring mentor and a source of feminist solidarity, but the reality turns out to be different. Told steadfastly from Santosh’s perspective, the film depicts her emotional journey in learning what she comes to accept, what she internalizes, and what changes she is able to enact. There within we witness structural and generational corruption, explored with meticulous attention to detail and remarkable rigor. Screened in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival and selected as the UK entry for the Best International Feature Film category at the 97th Academy Awards.

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Girls Will Be Girls ★

India, France, USA, Norway / 2024 / 118 min
Director：Shuchi TALATI

Mira, a 16-year-old model student at an elite boarding school in the Himalayas, becomes the first female student to be appointed as the school supervisor to set the standard of behaviors and learnings throughout the school. Despite her ambitious and fastidious nature, she feels the ache of first love when she meets Sri, and prematurely gives in to her desires. Her exploration of first love and sexual desires, however, takes an unexpected turn when her mother intervenes. Mira feels jealousy and insecurity from her mother and Sri’s strange intimacy, creating an awkwardly heavy rift between them…The film examines how traditional values in an Indian society, particularly the shades of patriarchy, affect women’s lives to this day, while drawing close attention to the escalating tension of the mother and daughter’s mind game. Without glorification or critique, the camera captures fleeting moments of intimacy, self approval, betrayal and forgiveness. The film premiered at Sundance Film Festival’s World Cinema Dramatic program, winning the Special Jury Prize for Preeti Panigrahi’s performance, along with the Audience Award.

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Viet and Nam

Vietnam, Philippines, Singapore, France, Netherlands, Italy, Germany, United States / 2024 / 129 min
Director：TRUONG Minh Quý

Two miners in their twenties, Viet and Nam. Their work lives are dusty and uniform, although hundreds of meters below in the dark they nurture a secret love. Their fathers both lost to war, Nam sets out with his mother and Ba, an old Viet Cong buddy of his father’s, to seek out his father’s remains in the forest of the Central Highlands, scattered with half-buried weapons. Viet goes with them, partly out of apprehension over Nam’s plan to stow away and sneak out of the country. Set in Vietnam in 2001, when the deep scars of the twenty years of war were still raw, the film portrays through the story of two miners in love the struggles and anguish of being young and queer in postwar Vietnam, as well as the challenges faced by the country itself. An exquisite film, filmed with an entrancing, subtle, and evocative quality, it is also rich in symbolism that aims to reveal the profound, hidden depths that lie beneath the surface. This is the second feature film by Trương Minh Quý, who garnered acclaim for his debut film, “Treehouse” (2019). This film premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival.

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Stranger Eyes

Singapore, Taiwan, France, USA / 2024 / 126 min
Director：YEO Siew Hua

A young father entranced by video of a family picnic. We realize that his little daughter has gone missing, and this is the latest footage her young parents have of her. Before long, DVDs of their daughter start showing up on their doorstep. They discover someone has been surveilling them from long before–could this person be the key to getting back their daughter? Yeo Siew Hua’s follow-up to “A Land Imagined” starts out as a crime thriller, but the case is solved relatively quickly with the Singapore Police Force’s vast store of CCTV footage. By that point the film has transformed beyond a mere thriller into a subtle, dark, meditative and ultimately baffling story of multiple layers, about contemporary isolation and surveillance culture. What is the significance of observing and being observed in the age of mass surveillance? This film explores human loneliness and vulnerability through the examination of this great and pressing question. Screened in competition at the Venice Film Festival.

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Mongrel ★

Taiwan, Singapore, France / 2024 / 128 min
Director：CHIANG Wei Liang & YIN You Qiao

Oom is a young illegal immigrant from Thailand and works as a carer for the elderly and people with disabilities in a rural mountain village in Taiwan. Working for his boss who unlawfully employs illegal immigrants from various Southeast Asian countries, Oom is often caught between the boss and immigrants as the middleman. One day, an elderly woman at the care home asks for his advice about her son with a heavy disability… The film excludes as much explanation as possible, using careful brushstrokes to delicately illustrate the hopelessly miserable conditions of the migrant workers living in arguably a modern-day slavery, and the nature of the exploitation system constructed by underworld powers in a hierarchy even higher than their immediate bosses. The masterfully controlled pictorial compositions inside and outside the frame, and the rhythmic coordination of the editing without fearing long silences are excellent. The film has reached an impressive degree of perfection for a first feature film. Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Liao Ching-sung (longtime editor of Hou's films) joined the project as Executive Producers. The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival Directors’ Fortnight and won a Special Mention of Caméra d'Or for debut feature film.

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Some Rain Must Fall ★

China, US, France, Singapore / 2024 / 98 min
Director：QIU Yang

40-year-old housewife Cai lost her aim of life and stands on the edge of a mental breakdown. In the beginning of the film, she inadvertently injures an elderly woman and is asked for compensation by the woman's family after she is hospitalized. From this event we start to see her circumstances - Cai is in the middle of divorcing her husband, and has a deep rift with her rebellious daughter. Her mother-in-law who cohabits with her, seems to suffer from dementia and her long estranged father is on his deathbed. She is floundering from the weight of the burden and depression. The film effectively tells Cai’s midlife crisis situation and the dysfunction of a middle class Chinese family in a suffocating 4:3 framing and beautifully melancholy imagery by cinematographer Constanze Schmitt. The star Yu Aier’s performance in her debut film is also fantastic. Winner of the Cannes Film Festival Short film programme Palme d’Or, Qiu Yang’s debut feature follows critical acclaim on a series of short films, including “A Gentle Night” (2017), which won the Palme d'Or for Best Short Film at the Cannes Film Festival. The film premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival Encounters section.

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Brief History of a Family ★

China, France, Denmark, Qatar / 2024 / 99 min
Director：LIN Jianjie

While doing pullups on the high school field, Shuo gets hit by a basketball thrown by his schoolmate Wei, slips off the bar, and injures his foot. Feeling guilty, Wei invites Shuo to his house to play video games. During dinner with Wei’s parents, Shuo reveals that he lost his mother and hints at the abuse he suffered from his alcoholic father. This was Shuo's first clever step to gain their sympathy. Gradually, Shuo spends more time at Wei's luxurious apartment, steadily winning the parents’ trust… With his masterful narrative precision, Lin Jianjie examines the shifting dynamics within a middle-class family infiltrated by a discreet intruder. Like a perfect piece of sculpture, every element of each frame is kept under tight control, while maintaining a clever and puzzling ambiguity, and his ability to sustain the tension of a thriller is nothing short of masterful. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was subsequently screened at the Berlin International Film Festival.

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Winter in Sokcho ★

France, Korea / 2024 / 104 min
Director：Koya KAMURA

Soo-Ha works at a small guesthouse in a seaside town of Sokcho, the northeastern part of South Korea. She returned to her hometown a few months ago from Seoul while intermittently cohabiting with her boyfriend Jun-Ho, who wants to become a model in Seoul. But her carefully constructed routine is disrupted by the arrival of Yan Kerrand, a semi-famous French artist, played by Roschdy Zem. Having been abandoned by her French father before his death, Soo-Ha's encounter with Kerrand reawakens her emotions and questions that have long been kept a lid on…Adapting a novel with the same title by Elisa Shua Dusapin, this film gives a sensitive and intimate look at a young woman's search for and acceptance of her identity. The abstract animation sequence by Agnès Patron effectively enhances the charm of Sokcho’s winter location. The first feature-length film by Japanese-French director Koya Kamura premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival Platform program, followed by a screening at the San Sebastiàn International Film Festival New Directors program.

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