Asian Studies

In Afghanistan, an all-girl robotics team risk everything to prove they can build a name for themselves in the world. Working in secret under the Taliban regime and in a male-dominated cultural environment, the girls encounter enormous challenges. With exceptional access, Afghan Dreamers tells an insprirational story about an extraodinarily brave group of young women.

2022 Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary Feature. Nominated for Best Documentary by the Director's Guild, Producer's Guild, Independent Spirit Awards, and Gotham Awards, and winner of Best Documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival, Ascension explores the paradoxical pursuit of wealth and progress in China. This extraordinary documentary follows factory workers, middle class consumers and elites as they chase the elusive "Chinese Dream.”

On January 23rd, 2020, China locked down Wuhan, a city of 11 million, to combat the emerging COVID-19 outbreak. Set deep inside the frontlines of the crisis in four hospitals, 76 Days tells indelible human stories at the center of this pandemic. These raw and intimate stories bear witness to the death and rebirth of a city under a 76-day lockdown, and to the human resilience that persists in times of profound tragedy.

Forget Me Not follows three unwed mothers staying at a shelter in the countryside on Jeju Island-in South Korea. Each one has to decide if she wants to keep the baby or give it up for adoption. Engelstoft’s sensitive portrait brings us close to a forbidden world and through her own experience as a Korean adoptee, she gives a deeply personal and extraordinary insight into a culture in which women can't choose their own fate.

Presented in a beautiful restoration and newly translated, Hong Sangsoo’s breakthrough second feature is an early masterwork from the prolific filmmaker. Playing with structure, perspective and time – elements that would become hallmarks of his later work – the film follows a young woman, Jisook, who, fresh off her relationship with a married man, joins two girlfriends for a vacation in the mountainous Kangwon region and quickly makes the same mistakes.

Award winning director Hong SangSoo dishes up a fresh take on modern courtship. When filmmaker Young-soo introduces his wealthy gallery owner friend Jae-hoon to another friend, the female television writer Soo-jung, the table is set for a complicated triangular relationship. 

Helmed by Tsai Ming-liang, Days is a Drama that doesn't mince words. Minimalist and slowly paced, the film features little dialogue. Under the pain of illness and treatment, Kang (Lee Kang-sheng) finds himself adrift. He meets Non (Anong Houngheuangsy) in a foreign land. They find consolation in each other before parting ways and carrying on with their days.

Filmmaker Joong-rae, suffering from writer’s block, takes a trip to the coast with his production designer Chang-wook, who brings along the vivacious Moon-sook. Soon after their arrival, Moon-sook falls for Joong-rae’s advances; however, the fickle hero can’t commit and he awkwardly parts with her. What had been a sardonic Jules and Jim turns into a burlesque Vertigo when Joong-rae returns to the coastal resort and attempts to recreate the original romance with a woman who resembles Moon-sook, until his jilted lover shows up…

Shot in the narrow alleys, petite cafes and beautiful hanok inns of Seoul’s historic Jong-ro district, a favorite Hong location, Hill of Freedom is a masterful, alternately funny and haunting, tale of love and longing from the great director. Kwon (Seo Young-hwa) returns to Seoul from a restorative stay in the mountains. She is given a packet of letters left by Mori (Ryo Kase, Like Someone In Love), who has come back from Japan to propose to her. As she walks down a flight of stairs, Kwon drops and scatters the letters, all of which are undated. When she reads them, she has to make sense of the chronology… and so must we. 

From the Academy Award winning director of Parasite, Bong Joon-Ho's Influenza is a startling short film that marks a singular achievement in the filmmaker’s thrilling body of work. Bong's disturbingly humorous film traces the downward spiral of an unemployed 31 year-old man as he is captured on Seoul’s omnipresent CCTVs and cameras. Completed between Memories of Murder and The Host but never before released, it demonstrates a young filmmaker reaching the height of his powers.

The greatest hoax in the history of Modern Art. Driven to Abstraction unravels an improbable tale of self-delusion, greed, and fraud – the $80 million forgery scandal that rocked the art world and brought down New York's oldest and most venerable gallery. Was the gallery’s esteemed director the victim of a con artist who showed up with an endless treasure trove of abstract expressionist masterpieces? Or did she suspect they were fakes yet continue to sell them for millions of dollars? 

The Independent Spirit Award-nominated debut of acclaimed filmmaker Patrick Wang (A Bread Factory, The Grief of Others), In The Family is a heartfelt story woven around child custody, two-Dad families, loss, interracial relations, the American South, and the nature of what it means to be in a family, all explored with ambitious and rewarding nuance.

From the Academy Award nominated director of DRIVE MY CAR. A truly original Vertigo riff, based on a novel by Tomoka Shibasaki, Asako I & II is a mysterious and intoxicating pop romance. Ryusuke Hamaguchi's beguiling film traces the trajectory of a love—or, to be accurate, two loves—found, lost, displaced, and regained.

In 1957, the Chinese government launched an anti-Rightist campaign to eliminate anyone suspected of opposition to those in power. Thousands were sent to camps in the Gobi Desert for re-education. Many died of starvation. Wang Bing’s monumental new documentary, at over 8 hours, documents the testimony of those who survived. 

In 2010, the sleepy fishing town of Taiji found itself in the world’s spotlight when The Cove, a documentary denouncing its whaling traditions, won an Academy Award. Fascinating and thought-provoking, A Whale of Tale revisits this story and discovers a different perspective as it unearths a deep divide in eastern and western thought about nature, wildlife and cultural sensitivity.

The first railway line in Thailand was inaugurated in 1893 – a sign of progress and prosperity. Shot over eight years on every active line of the railway system, this extraordinary documentary, produced by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, offers an unprecedented immersion into the country’s past and present.

Forced to flee his country after filming politically sensitive events such as the Saffron Revolution, a Myanmar filmmaker finds himself a refugee amongst refugees in Thailand, where he discovers the plight of fellow migrants working under slavery-like conditions.

The widening gap between generations in China today is at the heart of this deeply resonant documentary about a son, recently returned from the city, trying to modernize his aging father’s beekeeping business.

For more than 35 years, scientist Aušra Revutaite has lived alone atop the Tuyuksu glacier studying the effects of climate change. This remarkable documentary, pulsing with an otherworldly beauty, captures her everyday life and work.

One family's efforts to secure freedom for their father, a political dissident serving a life sentence in China, is a story of international intrigue, diplomatic maneuvering and immense personal sacrifice.

Academy Award winning filmmaker Ruby Yang’s My Voice, My Life follows a group of students from underprivileged families who are cast in a musical theater performance. A moving story about the importance of art education in our schools.

Using found snapshots, diary entries and 16mm Chinese melodramas, filmmaker Jason Byrne resurrects the ghosts of a decommissioned cargo ship - once used to carry coal along the Yangtze - as it crosses the Indian Ocean to be salvaged for scrap.

Often cited as one of the great documentary achievements, Wang Bing's dazzling tour-de-force — a gripping monologue recounting five decades in the life of a once-ardent socialist in the new China — is a testament to the power of oral history and the strength of one extraordinary woman. Never before available.

Renowned cinematographer and artist Christopher Doyle celebrates Hong Kong and its people with this vibrant documentary that focuses on the city's residents in their childhood, youth, and old age.

Beginning with a mining explosion in Mongolia and ending in a ghost city west of Beijing, political documentarian Zhao Liang's visionary new film details the social and ecological devastation behind an economic miracle that may yet prove illusory.

An inspirational new documentary from Oscar-winner Ruby Yang (The Blood of Yingzhou District), a profile of the renowned Asian Youth Orchestra, founded 25 years ago with the aim of connecting the region’s young people through music.

In the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster, a farmer ekes out a solitary existence within the radiation zone. This astonishing documentary reveals the surreal scope and devastation of the nuclear tragedy, and the stubborn signs of life.

This beautiful, evocative documentary captures the life, work and struggle of one of the most original yet under-recognized artists of the 20th century – the writer and visual artist Mu Xin.

A stunning, dreamlike debut, a country doctor's search for an abandoned child takes him to a mysterious place where past, present and future become one.

With readings by John Berger, Taskafa offers a brilliantly incisive meditation on urban space and city life by investigating the complex history of Istanbul’s street dogs.

Mahboba Rawi, founder of Mahboba’s Promise, has dedicated her life to helping orphans, widows and schooling girls in Afghanistan. In this documentary, we follow her efforts to challenge centuries-old traditions to make a love marriage happen for a young couple.

A singular portrait of a nomadic goat herding family whose livelihood and traditions are being threatened by an increasingly urbanized world.