BIFF's Asian Cinema 100

Set in Taiwan during the year 1960, a talented but self-centered student refuses to compromise his moral standards with anyone - teachers, friends, parents or girlfriend.

The story of a family embroiled in the "White Terror", mainland China's political repression that was wrought on the Taiwanese people by the Kuomintang government in the late 1940s.

An old couple visit their children and grandchildren in the city, but receive little attention.

In 1960s Hong Kong, two neighbors form an intimate bond after making a discovery about their spouses in this visually stunning tale of unrequited love.

The Unvanquished is the second part of the Bangladesh Apu film series about a boy named Apu who gets a scholarship to study at a College in Calcutta. His mother is alone and torn between wanting him to be successful and not wanting him to leave her alone.

In ancient Japan a crime take place as told from three different travelers who have experienced the crime: a man being killed and his wife being raped. Which if any of the stories is true? A Akira Kurosawa film about morals, truth, and communication.

Each member of a family in Taipei asks hard questions about life's meaning as they live through everyday quandaries.

All unemployed, Ki-taek's family takes peculiar interest in the wealthy and glamorous Parks for their livelihood until they get entangled in an unexpected incident.

This fiction-documentary hybrid uses a sensational real-life event—the arrest of a young man on charges that he fraudulently impersonated the well-known filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf—as the basis for a stunning, multilayered investigation into movies, identity, artistic creation, and existence, in which the real people from the case play themselves.

Two melancholic Hong Kong policemen fall in love: one with a mysterious female underworld figure, the other with a beautiful and ethereal waitress at a late-night restaurant he frequents.

Dying of kidney disease, a man spends his last, somber days with family, including the ghost of his wife and a forest spirit who used to be his son, on a rural northern Thailand farm.

Based on the true story of the country's first known serial murders, which took place between 1986 and 1991 in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province, the movie begins with a series of raped and murdered women. Two bumbling, incompetent local detectives realizes a serial killer is on the loose and begins to chase after the murderer.

A composer and his wife are thrown into turmoil when a housemaid becomes more than they bargained for.

An 8 year old boy must return his friend's notebook he took by mistake, lest his friend be punished by expulsion from school.

A married couple living in a desolate small town in post-WWII China are paid a surprise visit by an old friend of the husband's.

Spirited Away is an Oscar winning Japanese animated film about a ten year old girl who wonders away from her parents along a path that leads to a world ruled by strange and unusual monster-like animals. Her parents have been changed into pigs along with others inside a bathhouse full of these creatures. Will she ever see the world how it once was?

A middle-aged Tehranian man, Mr. Badii is intent on killing himself and seeks someone to bury him after his demise. Driving around the city, the seemingly well-to-do Badii meets with numerous people, including a Muslim student, asking them to take on the job, but initially he has little luck. Eventually, Badii finds a man who is up for the task ...

A South Korean woman in her sixties enrolls in a poetry class as she grapples with her faltering memory and her grandson's appalling wrongdoing.

A couple has to make a decision to leave Iran to better the life of their child or to stay and take care of a parent suffering from Alzheimers; however, the couple's marriage may end in divorce.

Seven Samurai is the masterpiece from Akira Kurosawa from 1954 in which a town hires an old samurai to protect their village. A mix of action, comedy, and social drama. This epic film is an intimate look into the powerful emotions of the characters and named the greatest film in Japanese cinema history.

Two boys meet at an opera training school in Peking in 1924. Their resulting friendship will span nearly 70 years and endure some of the most troublesome times in China's history.

Oldboy is the revenge drama from Director Park Chan-wook. Based on a Manga comic it depicts the suffering path of a man who must deal with the never ending torment of having unknowingly made someone his enemy.

China in the 1920's. After her father's death, 19 year old Songlian is forced to marry the much older lord of a powerful family. With three wives already, each living in a separate house within the great castle, there is fierce competition for his attention and the privileges that are gained. This competition gets out of hand...

Noriko is perfectly happy living at home with her widowed father, Shukichi, and has no plans to marry -- that is, until her aunt Masa convinces Shukichi that unless he marries off his 27-year-old daughter soon, she will likely remain alone for the rest of her life. When Noriko resists Masa's matchmaking, Shukichi is forced to deceive his daughte...

In Tokyo, the reckless single mother Keiko moves to a small apartment with her twelve years old son Akira Fukushima and hidden in the luggage, his siblings Kyoko, Shigeru and Yuki. The children have different fathers and do not have schooling, but they have a happy life with their mother.

The passionate relationship between two men with unusual consequences. The film is divided in two parts. The first half charts the modest attraction between two men in the sunny, relaxing countryside and the second half charts the confusion and terror of an unknown menace lurking deep within the jungle shadows.

This depiction of childhood and adolescence draws heavily from the filmmaker's own boyhood. Like many of their compatriots, Hou's family moved from the mainland to Taiwan in 1948 and was unable ever to return. The film focuses on the widening generation gap in a family cut off from its cultural heritage.

Two sisters move to the country with their father in order to be closer to their hospitalized mother, and discover the surrounding trees are inhabited by Totoros, magical spirits of the forest. When the youngest runs away from home, the older sister seeks help from the spirits to find her.

China's rapid changes from the late-1970s to the early 1990s, as seen through the lives of four performers in a theater troupe.

A couple take a trip to Argentina but both men find their lives drifting apart in opposite directions.

A mother lives quietly with her twenty-eight-year-old son, Do-joon, providing herbs and acupuncture to neighbors. One day, a girl is brutally murdered, and Do-joon is charged with the killing. Now, it's his mother's call whether to prove him innocent or to leave him imprisoned.

A town in Fengjie county is gradually being demolished and flooded to make way for the Three Gorges Dam. A man and woman visit the town to locate their estranged spouses, and become witness to the societal changes.

Ming dynasty noblewoman Yang must escape from the evil eunuch Hsu. She seeks refuge at a decrepit town where she gets assistance from a naive scholar & a group of mysterious yet powerful monks.

Deliveryman Jongsu is out on a job when he runs into Haemi, a girl who once lived in his neighborhood. She asks if he'd mind looking after her cat while she's away on a trip to Africa. On her return she introduces to Jongsu an enigmatic young man named Ben, who she met during her trip. And one day Ben tells Jongsu about his most unusual hobby...

Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon is an epic Chinese martial arts film. Ang Lee delivers in a classical storytelling manner breathtaking landscapes exciting fight scenes and many unforgettably beautiful images.

This film is based on flashbacks, which I'll ignore here for the sake of clarity. Married Japanese forester during WWII is sent to Indochina to manage forests. He meets a young Japanese typist and promises to leave his wife. He doesn't and after the war, she turns up and the affair resumes.

A story about director Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s parents who were both doctors, and his memories of growing up in a hospital environment.

The story of a love affair that begins during a picnic on the Thai-Burmese border.

Yusuke Kafuku, a stage actor and director, still unable, after two years, to cope with the loss of his beloved wife, accepts to direct Uncle Vanya at a theater festival in Hiroshima. There he meets Misaki, an introverted young woman, appointed to drive his car. In between rides, secrets from the past and heartfelt confessions will be unveiled.

In the final months of World War II, 14-year-old Seita and his sister Setsuko are orphaned when their mother is killed during an air raid in Kobe, Japan. After a falling out with their aunt, they move into an abandoned bomb shelter. With no surviving relatives and their emergency rations depleted, Seita and Setsuko struggle to survive.

An executive on the outs with his company gets in deeper when he pays off kidnappers who have abducted the wrong boy.

Two young brothers become the leaders of a gang of kids in their neighborhood. Ozu's charming film is a social satire that draws from the antics of childhood as well as the tragedy of maturity.

Kanji Watanabe is a middle-aged man who has worked in the same monotonous bureaucratic position for decades. Learning he has cancer, he starts to look for the meaning of his life.

In the spring of 1999, a group of old friends gather to celebrate their 20 year reunion. Among the group is Yeong-ho, a cold, unhappy man, whose demeanor puts a damper on the festivities. The seriousness of Yeong-ho's depression becomes apparent when he climbs a railroad bridge and looks like he might jump. At this crucial moment, memories of se...

The 1930s. Wishing to pass down his knowledge, the father teaches his children to sing Pansori. The elder daughter and the younger son become professional singers but time has changed and people are no longer interested in folk singing. The younger boy gives up on his studies and runs away from home. Fearful that the daughter might do the same, ...

This South Korean film depicts the life of the ever overwhelming course of nature in the changing seasons.

The lives of a couple, an amateur photographer and an injured girl intertwine.

A communist soldier is sent to a remote region of China in order to collect folk songs. Staying with a peasant family (a widower with two small children), he discovers a community whose way of life is completely alien to him, but he gradually wins their trust.

On a dark, rainy night, a historic and regal Taipei cinema sees its final film: 1967 martial arts feature "Dragon Inn". As the film plays, the lives of the theater's various employees and patrons intersect, and two ghostly actors arrive to mourn the passing of an era.

Julio, a young fisherman from a provincial village, descends into social alienation as he arrives in Manila to search for his loved one.