Asian Studies

Black Box Diaries follows director and journalist Shiori Ito’s courageous investigation of her own sexual assault in an improbable attempt to prosecute her high-profile offender. Unfolding like a thriller and combining secret investigative recordings, vérité shooting and emotional first-person video, Shiori's quest becomes a landmark case in Japan, exposing the country’s desperately outdated judicial and societal systems.

HOW TO HAVE AN AMERICAN BABY

How to Have an American Baby is a kaleidoscopic voyage into the booming shadow economy that caters to Chinese tourists who travel to the U.S. on “birthing vacations”—in order to obtain U.S. citizenship for their babies. Inside bedrooms, delivery rooms, and family meetings, the story of ahidden global economy emerges—depicting the aspirations and anxieties, fortunes and tragedies that befall the ordinary people caught in the web of its influence.

NOCTURNES

An immersive viewing experience of sound and imagery, Nocturnes weaves together an intricate and poetic tapestry of our world. Ecologist Mansi sets out on a quest to study moths in one of the most vibrant places on earth. She teams up with Bicki, a young man from the indigenous Bugun community. By focusing on a small, ephemeral, nocturnal creature like the moth, Nocturnes seeks to question a human-centric view of the world.

AGAINST THE TIDE

Mumbai fishermen Rakesh and Ganesh are inheritors of the great Koli knowledge system—a way to harvest the sea by following the moon and the tides. Rakesh has kept faith in traditional fishing methods while Ganesh has embraced technology. A prize-winner at Sundance, Against the Tide is a tale of two men’s bond fractured by the weight of a changing world and a sea threatened by climate change

LOTUS SPORTS CLUB

Shot in Cambodia over 5 years, Lotus Sports Club, is an inspiring coming-of-age story that centers around Leak, a teenage trans man who plays football in the under-21s women’s team of Kampong Chhnang, and Pa Vann, the coach and father-figure to Leak and other LGBTQ+ players on the team. This compelling, fascinating, and empowering story will take the viewers on a unique and emotional journey through a world of love and solidarity between individuals who have finally found a community they would only have dreamt before.

BEYOND THE AGGRESSIVES: 25 YEARS LATER

Two decades ago, the groundbreaking film The Aggressives showcased the remarkable stories of Chin, Octavio, Trevon, and Kisha — a watershed moment of visibility for masc-presenting BIPOC individuals that gave voice to a community that hadn’t seen themselves authentically represented in cinema before. Now, nearly 20 years later, the same four protagonists reunite to reflect on their past and envision new futures.

OMOIYARI: A SONG FILM BY KISHI BASHI

In Omoiyari: A Song Film by Kishi Bashi, internationally acclaimed composer and songwriter K Ishibashi (professionally know as "Kishi Bashi") embarks on a personal quest by creating his music in locations relevant to the Japanese American Incarceration during WWII. Omoiyari is a genre breaking, artistic exploration that fuses history, music, and the complexities of the human condition.

DEAR THIRTEEN

An incisive and timely documentary, Dear Thirteen weaves together nine stories of thirteen-year-olds from across the globe. Video diaries and candid interviews reveal how global issues are shaping – and being shaped by – young people: gender identity, rising anti-Semitism, gun violence, and racial divisions. This empathetic portrait of a new generation goes beyond stereotypes of adolescence to capture the complexity of finding a way into adulthood today.

AFGHAN DREAMERS

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.

MINAMATA MANDALA

Filmed over 15 years, this epic three-part documentary by Kazuo Hara (The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On) chronicles the history of struggle for a community in southern Japan suffering from “Minamata disease”—a debilitating neurological disease caused by methylmercury poisoning from the consumption of fish contaminated by industrial wastewater—as they continue the decades-long battle for legal recognition and reparations from the government.

AS FAR AS THEY CAN RUN

An intimate, unflinching look at children with intellectual disabilities in rural Pakistan who have been deemed "useless" by their communities. A searing "verité" portrait of three young teenagers who manage to find some acceptance and a place in society through sports. As Far As They Can Run is a moving documentary that offers an insightful window into the world of Special Olympics and the impact this event has on a community.

ASCENSION

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.”

76 DAYS

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

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.

BAATO

Every winter Mikma and her family travel by foot from their village deep in the Himalaya of Nepal to sell local medicinal plants in urban markets. This year, construction of a new highway to China has begun in their roadless valley, and things are never going to be the same. With the new road will come new challenges, new opportunities, and ultimately a new way of being to those who live along its path.

IN THE ABSENCE

2020 Academy Award Nominee Best Documentary Short Subject. When the passenger ferry MV Sewol sank off the coast of South Korea in 2014, over three hundred people lost their lives, most of them schoolchildren. Years later, the victims’ families and survivors are still demanding justice. This acclaimed documentary combines intimate interviews with archival footage and audio recordings for an investigation into a tragic incident which ultimately led to the impeachment and imprisonment of the country's president.

DRIVEN TO ABSTRACTION

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?

JADDOLAND

A visit to her mother’s home art studio in Texas prompts the filmmaker to explore the meaning of home and the search for belonging across three generations of her Iraqi family. Winner of the Truer Than Fiction Award at the 2020 Film Independent Spirit Awards.

MR. TOILET: The World's #2 Man

To a stranger, he’s a guy obsessed with toilets, but to those who know him he's “Mr. Toilet,” a crusader in global sanitation. A former entrepreneur, Jack Sim uses humor to campaign for something no one dares talk about: shit. It's a crisis that impacts over 2 billion people. In India alone, 200,000 children die each year from lack of safe sanitation. Jack fought for and established UN World Toilet Day, but with recent corporate pushback and thinning resources, he is discovering there is a price to pay for being the world's #2 hero.

SUNRISE/SUNSET

Shot in elegiac black and white, the romantic, wistful medium length Sunrise/Sunset, captures a college student's brief visit to New York from South Korea; recontextualizing all-too-familiar landmarks—Washington Square Park, Times Square, the Brooklyn Bridge—while subtly exploring the liminal space not only between cultures, but between the possibilities of adolescence and the realities of adulthood.

EVERY PULSE OF THE HEART IS WORK

Filmed across India, the central theme of Paweł Wojtasik’s (End of Life) stunning new documentary is work. With a patient, unobtrusive approach, it consists of transcendent portraits of a broad spectrum of laborers, from a surgeon to a priest to a masseur, forming a composite vision of society, where each has a place in the tangled web of human endeavor.

ASAKO I & II

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.

DEAD SOULS

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.

A WHALE OF A TALE

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.

RAILWAY SLEEPERS

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.

IN EXILE

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 BEEKEEPER AND HIS SON

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.

WOMAN AND THE GLACIER

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.

INSIDE THESE WALLS

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.

MY VOICE, MY LIFE

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.

SCRAP VESSEL

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.

FENGMING

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.

HONG KONG TRILOGY

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.

BEHEMOTH

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.

IN SEARCH OF PERFECT CONSONANCE

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.

HALF-LIFE IN FUKUSHIMA

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.

DREAMING AGAINST THE WORLD

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.

KAILI BLUES

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.

TASKAFA, STORIES OF THE STREET

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.

LOVE AND MARRIAGE IN KABUL

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.

DAUGHTERS OF ANATOLIA

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