Asia House Film Festival, London
As you’d expect, there are new titles from big regional hitters such as China and Japan here, but also films from the Asian countries you rarely hear from or about. Like Kazakhstan – two sides of which can be seen in the films of Yermek Tursunov: Zhat (Stranger) is a scenic wilderness adventure in the vein of Kurosawa’s Dersu Uzala; and Little Brother (Kenzhe), an urban hitman thriller. There are also new features from Myanmar (monk’s story Panchagavya), Tajikistan (rural women’s tale Chilla), Mongolia (rockumentary Live From UB) and even a short from Saudi Arabia. Offerings closer to the sort of thing you might expect include an eye-opening documentary on South Korea’s celebrity pro-gamers (State Of Play) and Japanese schoolgirl anime The Case Of Hana And Alice, while rising Chinese star Zhang Wei is one of many directors in attendance here, with his sweatshop social drama Factory Boss.
Borderlines Film Festival, Herefordshire, Shropshire & Powys
Bringing relief to the arthouse-starved Welsh borders, this festival has a “let’s put the film on right here” spirit, making use of village halls, community centres, theatres and whatever else is around. There are about 100 films in this year’s programme, mostly recent hits (Room, Joy, Youth), previews (High-Rise, Victoria, Son Of Saul) and world cinema with a rural bent (Iceland’s Rams and Ethiopia’s Lamb would make a dream ovine double bill). In Hereford there’s also a Tarkovsky retrospective and a focus on Romani cinema, the latter of which brings unseen work such as Hamlet-inspired Slovakian drama Gypsy. And in Hay-on-Wye on the final weekend there’s a festival of British cinema, with Terence Davies in person and new work such as the Hebrides-set Iona and comedy Black Mountain Poets, with Alice Lowe.
