Schedule:

Friday, July 14, 2023

3:30 PM: Narrative Shorts Showcase – Live Action

All Your Fault, PD          
Kim Sun-yeun, 2022, South Korea, 16m
Korean with English subtitles
North American Premiere
A film producer is forced to go on a potentially fatal errand when zombies attack the set.

Fix Anything                            
Lê Lâm Viên, 2022, Vietnam, 5m
Vietnamese with English subtitles
North American Premiere
A father ropes in his son for exploits using his DIY “memory eraser” van on their one-night adventure.

Pufferfish
Mohamad Kamal Alavi, 2023, Iran, 15m
Persian with English subtitles
World Premiere
Ava attends a religious rite at school, where teachers sing hymns. After school, she attends her cousin Pouya’s birthday party, but with the presence of uninvited guests, the birthday takes a different form.

Infant (Perzent)                       
Karash Zhanyshov, 2022, Kyrgyzstan, 16m
Kyrgyz with English subtitles
US Premiere
An orphan is torn about discovering the truth about his birth mother. When he reunites with his beloved girl, his life transforms, and he gains hope.

Kumbang (Bugs)                   
Gwai Lou, 2023, Malaysia, 14m
Bahasa Malaysia with English subtitles
World Premiere
After cutting himself accidentally during one of his live-streaming sessions, Farid, a boy from a rural area of Malaysia, is offered money by one of his followers to do it again.

Neo Portraits                        
Gazebo, 2023, Japan, 20m
Japanese with English subtitles
International Premiere
Despite cutting-edge technology and “things that haven’t changed” coexisting, junior high student Takumi is frustrated that the people in his town treat android portraits as real.

Resellers                      
Lee Seung-ju, 2022, South Korea, 11m
Korean with English subtitles
World Premiere
Sungjae makes money by selling cigarettes to teenagers. One day he meets an unexpected buyer.      

A Roadside Banquet
Peiqi Peng, 2023, USA, China, 16m
Mandarin with English subtitles
East Coast Premiere
Mai, an 11-year-old girl, discovers after attending her baby brother’s first birthday party that her parents never really wanted a girl. The revelation prompts a surprising transformation.

Sweet Refuge                       
Maryam Mir, 2023, USA, 12m
English, Arabic with English subtitles
East Coast Premiere
A Syrian baker struggling to sell his walnut baklava meets a savvy Indian ladoo maker who appeals to one of New York’s most coveted customers: Health-conscious Brooklynites.

Will You Look At Me
Shuli Huang, 2022, China, 20m
Mandarin with English subtitles
When a young Chinese queer filmmaker returns to his hometown in search of himself, a long-due conversation with his mother leads them on a quest for acceptance and love.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

7:00 PM: Killing Romance

This year’s opening film, Killing Romance is a camera-drunk comic fantasia about a former superstar actress, Hwang Yeo-Rae (Lee Ha-Nee), trapped in a toxic marriage with egomaniacal, obscenely wealthy tycoon Jonathan Na (Lee Sun-Kyun), who wooed her while on vacation on a South Pacific island. Teaming up with her young fanboy neighbor Kim Beom-Woo (Gong Myoung), they hatch a plan to break her free from her gilded cage. From there on, alternatively horrific and hilarious episodes unfold as the two devise an ill-advised plot to kill Jonathan and reclaim Yeo-Rae’s freedom and stardom. Helmed with an adroit hand by Korean comedy’s enfant terrible, Lee Won-suk (a NYAFF regular), the film rounds up unforgettable performances that power up an electroshock of a tale, dancing between a love story, a musical, a murder plot, and a million things in between. This is peak Korean movie inventiveness.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

Saturday, July 15, 2023

12:30 PM: Bad Education

After graduating high school four buddies get drunk on a roof and exchange stories of the worst things they’ve ever done. An omnibus of shocking, morally bankrupt hooliganism ensues. However, a la the Rashomon effect, their veracity is negligible. When the one friend with a moral compass has no tale to tell, they offer him a real-time opportunity for life-affirming chaos. His surprising actions send them on a darkly humorous fight for their lives. Taiwanese movie star Kai Ko’s impressive envelope-pushing directorial debut proves he was paying attention on set all these years. Taking over from his mentor Giddens Ko (Kai Ko-starrer You Are the Apple of My Eye, NYAFF 2012), Kai delivers a kinetic (and often laugh-out-loud-against-our-better-judgment) delineation of good and evil with turbulent high stakes.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

2:30 PM: You And Me And Me

Identical twin sisters You and Me revel in fooling anyone they can as they use their twinship to their own personal advantage. Soon after the shocking news of their parents’ impending divorce, they are sent to spend the summer at grandma’s in the countryside while mom and dad work things out. There they just happen to meet up with their schoolmate Mark, who has a crush on one of them but can’t tell them apart… yet. Love triangle shenanigans ensue as the girls have to face up to their own identities and confront the feelings of first love together. This charmingly insightful directorial debut by real-life twins Weawwan and Wanweaw Hongvivatana puts a buoyantly ironic spin on summer romance.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

5:30 PM: Rebound

Imagine no vengeance. Imagine no bloody retribution. Imagine no star-crossed lovers, no North vs. South. And yet, here it is, a quintessentially Korean tale of building a winning basketball squad from a ragtag group of misfits and underachievers, against the worst odds. Rebound tells the inspiring true story of Busan Jungang High School’s underdog team, led by the fiery passion of its coach Yang-hyun (Ahn Jae-hong). Faced with the challenge of assembling a competitive team from basically nothing, his ingenuity and steely commitment bring his players together, transforming them into serious challengers against a seemingly infinitely superior opponent, Seoul’s Yongsan High, which has all the talent money can buy. Transcending the sports genre and eschewing the pitfalls of easy sentiment and melodrama, Chang Hang-jun’s Rebound elevates its premise with a singularly rousing screenplay, co-written by Kwon Sung-hui (The Spy Gone North, As One) and Kim Eun-hee (Netflix’s Kingdom).

Location: Walter Reade Theater

8:30 PM: Egoist

A poignant story of love, loss, self-sacrifice, and discovery, Daishi Matsunaga’s heralded new film is inspired by the seminal semi-autobiographical novel by Makoto Takayama. The first Japanese production with both an LGBTQ+ inclusive director and an intimacy choreographer, Egoist features two of Japan’s biggest movie stars in very compromising positions. Suffused with delicacy and naturalism, the film completely sidesteps melodrama in its beautifully humanist depiction of gay and maternal relationships. Ryohei Suzuki (HK: Hentai Kamen, Last of the Wolves) nearly sparkles with elegance, taste, and personal charm as the protagonist, Kosuke. A wealthy magazine editor with a close circle of artistic, bon vivant friends, Kosuke is surprised when he falls for his new personal trainer, Ryuta (Hio Miyazawa). A financially strapped high-school dropout, Ryuta juggles a number of jobs to support his doting single mother. And then the unthinkable happens.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

Sunday, July 16, 2023

12:15 PM: A Hundred Flowers

Genki Kawamura, a best-selling author (If Cats Disappeared From the World) and star producer (on anime mega-hits like Belle, Weathering With You, and Your Name) makes a poetic and visually stunning feature debut, adapted from his own novel, with A Hundred Flowers. Yuriko (veteran Mieko Harada, who made movie history in Akira Kurosawa’s Ran) is an aging piano teacher whose mind is fast fading as dementia fractures and undoes her grip on reality. Her son, Izumi (Masaki Suda) discovers her diary and finds himself transported back into the uncertain world of his own memories and the tangle of their common past, at the center of which lies a haunting experience of his mother’s disappearance/ This intimate meditation on memory and identity, forgetting and forgiveness, both devastating and beautiful, won the Silver Shell for Best Director at the 70th San Sebastian International Film Festival, and is a must-watch cinematic experience.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

2:30 PM: Okiku and the World

Edo-era Japan is remembered for many things—brutal nation building, isolationist foreign policies, the last samurai. Leave it to veteran auteur Junji Sakamoto to remind us that it also marked the culmination of a truly sustainable ecosystem. In his audacious, aesthetically brilliant new jidaigeki (period drama), Okiku and the World, the director achieves a perfect blend of potty humor, cutting social commentary, and budding romance set amidst the fecal ubiquity of the mid-19th century. As playful as it is soulful, the film focuses on two unlikely protagonists, “manure men” Yasuke and Chunji, who collect human waste from tenement outhouses and resell it to farmers in the countryside. Chunji longs to woo lovely schoolteacher Okiku, who longs to see the world but cannot, because she must support her father, a fallen samurai. To see Sosuke Ikematsu energetically scooping out latrines; to hear Koichi Sato delivering a treatise on love to his real-life son, Kanichiro, as he battles constipation; to view the ever-demure Haru Kuroki complaining about *******—these are delights you never knew you needed, but will never forget.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

5:00 PM: Glorious Ashes

Profound and lyrical, the first film in over a decade from cinematic poet Bui Thac Chuyen (Adrift) spins a mesmerizing tale of life, love, loneliness, and pyromania in yesteryear’s Mekong Delta. Based on short stories by renowned female author Nguyen Ngoc Tu, Glorious Ashes intertwines the fates of two young wives and their deadbeat husbands with an older woman who begins living with an ex-con. Breathtakingly beautiful and heartbreakingly poignant, the saga is nearly ethnographic in the authenticity of its details, with fire and water depicted frequently and magnificently in all their extremes and visual power. Both transgressive and transcendent, the film is a triumphant reflection of the resilience of womanhood in a less modern world, and a scorching condemnation of the inequities of the patriarchal society.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

7:30 PM: Art College 1994

What do Shakespeare, James Joyce, Van Gogh, and Kurt Cobain have in common? They’re all topics for rambling conversations about art, life, and freedom at the eponymous school where an assortment of slackers happen to be enrolled. Loosely based on filmmaker Liu Jian’s (Have A Nice Day) own experiences at the Chinese Southern Academy of Arts, this consistently compelling masterwork proves that art school students are just about the same everywhere. The ensemble characters are smart and funny, and their flaws irresistibly endearing as they fumble toward their future, and their dorm-room philosophizing is voiced by a starry cast that includes **** Zijian, Zhou Dongyu, Jia Zhangke, and Bi Gan. This bittersweet story of youth, evoking both nostalgia and hope, comes fully alive through beautiful animation that is meticulously rendered in an old-school 2-D package.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

10:00 PM: Manhole

Young sales executive Kawamura leads a picture-perfect life. He’s handsome, well-liked, has a great job that he excels at, and is about to marry the CEO’s daughter. On his way home from a surprise party the night before his wedding, a bizarre happenstance lands him in a desolate manhole amidst a driving downpour, with no easy way out. He is armed only with a trusty cell phone, but who will answer his calls for help and how will he ever get out of this dire situation in time for the big day? As this fantastical edge-of-your-seat thriller unfolds, all is not as it seems, revealing a sinister, twisted tale of betrayal, imposture, and revenge.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

Monday, July 17, 2023

3:30 PM: The Sunny Side of the Street

After a fit of road rage gone south, Yat, a cantankerous cabbie with a checkered past, finds himself embroiled in the fate of a young Pakistani asylum-seeker. These two lost souls find they have more in common than they thought as they form a strong bond on a path of redemption paved with corruption and despair. As secrets come to light and Yat’s all-but-estranged policeman son gets involved in the young boy’s case, the stakes are raised toward a nail-biting climax. Making his feature debut, Malaysian-Chinese director Lau Kok-rui tells this tale with refreshing empathy and authenticity, humanizing the immigrant experience with stark candor. And with HK cinema stalwart Anthony Wong in the driver’s seat as Yat, the tension is palpable yet also tempered with bona-fide pathos.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

6:00 PM: Dream

From acclaimed director Lee Byeong-heon comes one of the most highly anticipated blockbusters from Korea. Virtuoso soccer player Hong-dae (to whom Park Seo-jun lends his impossibly good looks and rather stunning skills with a ball) is a star athlete with an attitude problem, whose path comes across fast-talking, cynical producer So-min (K-pop megastar Lee Ji-eun, best known to the world as IU). The two embark on an impossible journey to fix the athlete’s PR issue, and form a national football team made up of unhoused individuals. Inspired by the real-life Korean team that participated in the 2010 Homeless World Cup, Dream turns the spotlight on the resilience and determination of those who have truly hit rock bottom. This pulse-raising and heartwarming film brings absolutely nothing that you’d expect from a conventional sports movie to the screen.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

9:00 PM: Marry My Dead Body

Wannabe supercop Min-han’s heroism nearly ruins an arrest, landing him on garbage duty in the park. When he picks up a discarded red envelope it turns out to be folk magic that betroths him to the ghost… of a gay man! Soon his paranormal paramour forces him to make a much needed attitude adjustment while also helping him solve a major drug case. Since only Min-han can see his ethereal hubby, the proceedings get hilariously complicated. Marry My Dead Body is full-throttle fun all the way, from high-voltage action to non-stop jocularity with pathos to spare, not to mention a wonderfully ribald and much-needed sendup of homophobia. The three leads, Austin Lin (iWeirDo, NYAFF 2020) as the ghost, Greg Hsu as Min-han, and Gingle Wang as his outspoken partner, all show off their magnificent chops with perfect comic timing and many awe-inspiring physical set-pieces that will have everyone laughing in the aisles.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

Tuesday, July 18, 2023

3:15 PM: Motherhood

This sweeping tale of maternity is exquisitely mannered, yet also colorfully tinged with a seductive scent of mystery and ripe bursts of melodrama. Spring-boarding off a news item about a 17-year-old girl’s attempted suicide, the details behind two generations of fraught mother-daughter relationships unfold with stirring twists and turns aplenty. The intense psychodrama of emotional blackmail and betrayal reveals a philosophical rumination on the titular concept that is as thought-provoking as it is compelling. Seasoned director Ryuichi Hiroki (Vibrator) exhibits his patented cinematic insight into female hearts and minds in this sublime adaptation of the shocking novel by Kanae Minato (Confessions).

Location: Walter Reade Theater

6:00 PM: The Effects of Lying

Naveen’s day gets off to a bad start when he fights with his belligerent wife and then miserably fails to navigate his teenage daughter’s rebellious tantrums. Murphy’s Law quickly rears its ugly head as things get progressively worse in irreverently farcical fashion. His solipsistic brother and demented father soon join the fray, and a multitude of crossed signals leads to slapstick-like shenanigans. As darkly ironic secrets are revealed, the whole family and a variety of interlopers find themselves on a tragicomic descent into chaos. With a smashing cast, the majority of whom just happen to be British Asian, The Effects of Lying cleverly milks the universal truisms of family dysfunction for both philosophical reflection and savage laughs galore.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

8:30 PM: Gaga

Taiwan’s indigenous population makes up about 3% of the county’s 24 million citizens. Gaga (Tribal Law), the third film by Taiwan’s first indigenous female director, Laha Mebow, offers such a rare, up-close and personal look at the storied Atayal tribe that the lines between documentary and fiction are magnificently blurred. It begins auspiciously with authentic tribespeople giving Taiwanese visitors an informative tour of their land and culture. The focus quickly switches to their family and what happens when their wise patriarch passes away, soon after his strongly independent granddaughter returns from studying abroad. This sets in motion a tangled web of drama across three generations, including a tumultuous mayoral election, tribal conspiracies, risk-reward gambles, unexpected visitors, and other emotionally-charged challenges of life. Imbued with divinely tragicomic undertones, Gaga’s deceptively simple story allows the audience to bask in the glory of this endearing clan’s unique culture and effervescent personalities.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

Wednesday, July 19, 2023

3:30 PM: Bear Man

Park Sung-woong is dazzling in two roles — as an embarrassingly goofy bear cub/man-child and a steely, well-dressed hit man — in this boisterous comedy, which manages to tickle the funny bone as well as hit all the right emotional notes concerning family, friendship, and professionalism. If you imagine you know where it’s all heading, don’t be surprised when veteran TV comedian Park Sung-kwang pulls a few tricks out of his sleeve… and keeps on pulling. This is high concept at its dizziest, with a multilayered abundance of absurdities, some impressive assassin training sequences, and several thoroughly unexpected cameos. Supposedly based on the Danggun myth that bears become human after eating garlic and mugwort, it all begins when twin cubs who are managed by the Pro-North Korean Institute of Technology disappear one day. What happens next takes place in overdrive, but it’s hilarious as well as heartwarming. The joie de vivre even extends to the end credits, so don’t leave the theater!

Location: Walter Reade Theater

6:00 PM: A Tour Guide

Han-young, a North Korean defector, gets a license to guide Chinese tourists thanks to the language skills she acquired as a refugee in China. She works diligently but faces many challenges, from coworker rivalry to assimilation, all while desperately searching for her missing brother. The irony of Han-Young’s position is emblematic of marginalized peoples’ struggles everywhere. As a stranger in a strange land, Han-young is entrusted to show people around ancient landmarks yet she herself often gets less than respect. Seeing her always a bit detached from her surroundings is a sobering symptom of her trauma, both from having fled her homeland as well as adjusting to a new one where the welcome isn’t entirely warm.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

8:30 PM: Vital Signs

Ma (Louis Koo) is the “Dirty Harry” of Hong Kong paramedics. He brazenly breaks the rules in order to save lives, no matter the cost to his own career. His new overachieving subordinate, who is being groomed for greatness, naively follows protocol, and his overly sympathetic heart, to a fault. This buddy mentor-mentee story is imbued with pathos set against the backdrop of harrowing thrill-a-minute emergency rescue operations. Koo shines as the stoic yet soft-hearted ambulanceman supreme, who must face his own painful past while literally breaking his back to provide a good future for his charmingly precocious young daughter. Add to the mix insightful social commentary about the plight of emigrants both to and from Hong Kong, along with a little star-crossed romance, and you have a thrilling human drama that sets out to preserve hearts and minds alike.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

Thursday, July 20, 2023

3:30 PM: Everyphone Everywhere

Director Amos Why (Far, Far Away, NYAFF 2022) brings his wry playfulness with narrative structure and media formalism to this pointed satire of postmodern communication and its resultant technological fallout. The day has come for three former classmates to meet up 25 years after graduation to share and compare time capsules of their youthful hopes and dreams with the actual lives they’re now living. Satelliting around this basic premise are the various people in each of their current situations and the modern-day foibles that have shaped their worlds, from online scams, seductions, affairs, corruption, child rearing, and marriages gone wrong to mobile phone mishaps and other clumsy predicaments. This is as much a glorious hangout movie as it is a comically prescient survey of social norms and their attendant fissures across the rocky landscape of contemporary Hong Kong.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

5:45 PM: In Broad Daylight

Kay (Jennifer Yu, a NYAFF 2018 guest) is a tough-as-nails investigative reporter who goes undercover at a home for the disabled based on a tip about staff abuse of the residents. She not only corroborates the frightening allegations but also discovers how disastrously flawed Hong Kong’s health care system is, especially for those who cannot care for themselves. However, after her story breaks, further unspeakable truths are revealed, leading Kay on a dire crusade for justice. Based on real events, this hard-hitting exposé of systematic failure and institutionalized corruption is a clarion call for compassion and respect without prejudice. Yu delivers a striking performance, infusing her role with grit and vulnerability as she leads an equally stellar cast. Told with sobering candor, this gripping tale comments fiercely on social decay, where even journalists can be maligned as pariahs or scapegoats.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

8:30 PM: The White Storm 3: Heaven or Hell

Genre maestro Herman Yau follows his highly successful showstopper The White Storm 2: Drug Lords (NYAFF 2019) with this even more hyperbolic and gritty entry in the gonzo super-cops vs. crazy crooks series. Hong Kong movie legends Louis Koo, Aaron Kwok, and Sean Lau appear together for the first time on the big screen. Yau ups the ante, setting the action in the notorious Golden Triangle and delving deeper into the moral dilemmas of his archetypal characters. Kwok plays Cheung, an undercover cop who infiltrates a drug cartel led by a notorious Thai drug lord (Lau). In classic heroic bloodshed fashion, the two develop a bond of brotherhood. Cheung’s only hope to escape the treacherous jungle region and his ambiguous morality is to somehow contact the superintendent of the Hong Kong Narcotics Bureau (Koo), who has solemnly sworn to save Cheung and demolish the cartel once and for all.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

Friday, July 21, 2023

1:15 PM: Narrative Shorts Showcase - Animation

Borderline
Kong Son-hee, 2022, South Korea, 7m
A child awakes with twisted limbs in an unknown space, facing danger; a fairy comes to her rescue.

Confusion of the Afternoon
Yung-Chieh Lee, 2023, Taiwan, 3m
East Coast Premiere
Two boys play poker on a dull afternoon. As one boy inadvertently touches and makes eye contact with the other, it sparks a beautiful, imaginative dance.

Goose Mountain
Hu Rui, Chen Liaoyu, 2023, China, 18m
Mandarin with English subtitles
A peddler meets a Fox scholar on Goose Mountain who invites him to a drink. The Fox’s sweetheart Rabbit emerges from his mouth, followed by other nested sweethearts, Boar and Goose.

Handwritten
Jaime Sunwoo, 2022, USA, 9m
English
New York Premiere
Jaime Sunwoo highlights the beauty of handwriting through playful paper puppetry and animation, exploring its significance in history and our modern world.

Hidari                                       
Masashi Kawamura, Iku Ogawa, 2023, Japan, 5m
Japanese with English subtitles
Jingoro “Hidari” is a carpenter/sculptor who loses his arm—and his father—during the Edo Castle renovation. He seeks vengeance with his sidekick Sleeping Cat and his weaponized prosthetic arm after discovering that the murder was carried out by the Tokugawa Shogunate.

Impurrfection
Chiang Yao, 2022, Taiwan, 13m
Mandarin with English subtitles
New York Premiere
Unable to swim in the zodiac race due to aquaphobia, Mr. Cat lives regretfully by the sea until an accident brings him closer to the water.

Little Pig Demon (Nobody)
Yu Shui, Chen Liaoyu, 2023, China, 22m
Mandarin with English subtitles
One day, the monster king announces a plan to capture Monk Tang. Eating him can give monsters eternal life. Can a little pig demon fulfill all his tasks?

The Kidnapping (Old Man Yang)
Gu Yang, Liu Kuang, Chen Liaoyu, 2023, China, 17m
Mandarin with English subtitles
Old man Yang is about to move away from the Beijing Hutong that he lived in for years, but he cannot help reminiscing about the old times. Until one day, he gets a mysterious Prize Drawing….

Ship Down the Well
Chen Xi, Zhou Xiaolin, Chen Liaoyu, 2023, China, 14m
Mandarin with English subtitles
A boy is frightened by a monster in the water, and his friends bring him to a deserted yard where they find a statue of a monster.

What We Leave Behind
Kang Nam-jin, 2022, South Korea, 11m
Korean with English subtitles
International Premiere
A glimpse into the life of a man, from the birth of his child to the death of a loved one, told through his possessions and the place he calls home.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

3:45 PM: Nomad (Director’s Cut)

Four attractive souls, equal parts rich and working class, form a tragic romantic bond of ennui, anomie, absurdity, love, and violence in (Wong Kar Wai mentor) Patrick Tam’s genre-defying Hong Kong New Wave watershed. Wealthy Louis (Leslie Cheung) and his cousin Kathy (Pat Ha) hook up with Tomato (Cecilia Yip) and Pong (Kent Tong) amidst various urban antics. Harkening to Japan’s sun tribe trend of the ’50s, they mostly hang out and indulge in hedonistic pursuits until an ex-revolutionary shows up and sets the tone even more off-kilter. A transcendent example of cinema at its most freewheeling, this treatise on bohemian upheaval seduces with its garish rom-com tropes and avant-garde leanings, only to turn the entire affair upside down with wild plot twists and kinetic set-pieces. Omnisciently teetering between calculated camp and art house of a unique pedigree, this is an irrepressible must-see masterpiece.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

6:00 PM: Geylang

One fateful night in Geylang, Singapore’s red-light district, a beautiful young prostitute’s sudden disappearance leads her foul-mouthed pimp, ragamuffin cigarette-seller boyfriend, and a local social-outreach lawyer on a gore-filled wild goose chase. As the proverbial damsel in distress and a nefarious bag of money are both chased around town, each of our antiheroes’ odysseys crosses paths in post-postmodern crime-pulp madness told in illuminating temporal shifts. The action is fast and mean with a profanely dark sense of humor matched by gratuitously macabre overtones. This is a wild pop-art genre joyride seething with the tropically hot melting pot flavors of Singapore put through a riotous Moebius strip of cinematic influences.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

8:30 PM : Kitty the Killer

An underground espionage organization called The Agency employs a league of top-notch female assassins known by the code name Kitty to do their dirty work. When the Kitties’ mentor The Grey Fox is betrayed by The Agency and marked for death, he recruits a goofy young office worker to take his place. The newbie cutup chews the scenery as he transforms from zero to hero under the brutally rigorous training of the cool-as-ice Kitties. Their next mission? To wreak vengeance on the double crossers! Built on comic book logic with its tongue firmly in cheek, this anarchic action-comedy is a rousing pastiche of Asian genre film tropes and references exuberantly topped off with a riotous Thai sense of humor for a rollicking good time.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

9:00 PM: The Host

Bong followed his critically acclaimed Memories of Murder with this Seoul-set giant monster spectacle starring Song Kang Ho and Bae Doona. After an enormous amphibious mutant—rendered as alternately chaotic, lethal, and clumsy—emerges from the Han River and begins attacking the city, a young girl is carried away by the beast; in response, her family members do everything in their power to rescue her from its clutches. A high-concept disaster film and then some, The Host took inspiration from a real incident from 2000, in which a Korean mortician was ordered by the U.S. military to illegally dump formaldehyde and gives ample space to shrewdly satirize national and foreign bodies in crisis—from inept and uncaring governments to self-righteous protesters. An NYFF44 selection and part of the New York Asian Film Festival taking place from July 14-30, 2023 at Film at Lincoln Center, co-presented by NYAFF and Film at Lincoln Center.

Location: Damrosch Park

Saturday, July 22, 2023

12:00 PM: Factory Boss

In Factory Boss, a now classic naturalistic drama set in Shenzhen, we follow the struggles of Lin Dalin, the owner of a toy factory barely surviving after a worldwide financial crisis. As tensions rise among his unpaid employees, Lin secures a significant deal with a U.S. company that could save his business—but at a steep cost to his workforce. Amidst these challenges, an ambitious reporter goes undercover at his factory, intending to expose its shortcomings. She discovers appalling working conditions. However, she eventually shifts her focus to the true villains: international corporations exploiting cheap labor while ignoring workers’ rights. Factory Boss paints a complex portrait of Lin as both a victim of global capitalism and an opportunist. The film captures China’s rapid modernization and the harsh reality faced by its workers. Sharp and thought-provoking, Factory Boss offers a rare glimpse into the lives of those caught in the crossfire of progress and profit.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

2:15 PM: Mad Fate

Soi Cheang’s frenzied follow-up to the stylish, ultra-violent crime drama Limbo, Mad Fate carries in its DNA the legacy of old-school Hong Kong genre stylists, from Ringo Lam to Johnnie To, who serves as producer on the film. Hitting the ground running with a fake burial ceremony, the film follows the misfortunes and entanglements of an eccentric fortune teller (simply called “The Master”) with a psychopathic, cat-killing delivery boy (Lokman Yeung), possessed with an irrepressible urge for homicide. The plot soon thickens and darkens as sharp tools are put to macabre use and the Master frantically tries to reprogram the young man’s predicted path (upon which he is meant to graduate from sadistic voyeurism to murder most foul) while struggling to maintain his own sanity. Set in a surreal city of hookers, mystics, and psychopaths, Mad Fate is a crazed, morally complex addition to classic Cantonese mean-streets noir.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

4:30 PM: I Love You, Beksman

Fashionably androgynous Dali is the premier glamour guru in his family’s super-gay salon. Naturally everyone assumes he’s on the same team, but when a clumsy mishap with gorgeous beauty pageant contestant Angel leads him to save her day, the truth finally comes out: He’s a straight guy with a queer eye! As Dali falls head over heels in love with Angel he must overcome a multitude of obstacles on the path to true romance. This brilliant conceit riffs buoyantly on Romeo and Juliet for a modern day fairy tale in flamboyant attire. Wearing campy corniness on its self-aware pop-art sleeve, no stone is left unturned: Identity, machismo, feminism, femininity, stigma, social conditioning, discrimination, inclusion, prejudice, acceptance, sexuality, and gender are all taken to task with gay abandon. Christian Bables (Big Night!, NYAFF 2022) and the entire cast bring this whole affair home with pitch-perfect fabulousness.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

7:00 PM:m The Rib (Director's Cut)

32-year-old designer Huanyu knows he is a woman born as a man and has a support system of transgender friends, doctors, and his straight best friend/roommate. However, sex reassignment surgery legally requires parental approval and Huanyu’s pious Christian father views it as a deadly sin. This breakthrough film illustrates the intense stigma and obstacles that the LGBTQ+ community must face in China, offering an inside look at both the marginalized and those who condemn them. Striking black-and-white cinematography with an occasional glimmer of color underlines both the authenticity and hypocrisy portrayed in this stinging real-life drama.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

10:15 PM: Where Is the Lie?

Where Is the Lie? is that rare work that transforms the genre into something far deeper and more moving, with a humorous and hard-hitting script based on a real-life incident in the Philippines, as well as a star-making performance by luminous trans woman EJ Jallorina. As Janzen, the charming, lovelorn target of a vile cyberbully character who’s out to humiliate the LGBTQIA+ community just for kicks, Jallorina earns our empathy and our awe. We’re privy to the plans that entrap and entangle her in a madwoman’s web of deceit, and can only root for her to track down and punish the perpetrators. While this is a vibrantly Gen Z-skewing film, with candy-colored sets, frenetic pacing, and ample use of multiple screens, it is also a cautionary tale for all generations, and ultimately, a celebration of much-deserved payback.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

Sunday, July 23, 2023

1:00 PM: A Woman

At first, the titular heroine Kong Xiu seems like a typical factory worker in Mao’s China. Lithe, demure, charming, and intelligent, she appears to be a model citizen. However, while she tows the party line on the surface, in her personal life she extolls the virtues of resilience and resistance against institutionalized sexism and other forms of oppression as best she can. As history marches on through two unhappy marriages and she raises her beloved children, Kong Xiu perseveres and eventually pursues what she thought was an impossible dream. Director Wang Chao’s adaptation of Zhang Xiuzhen’s semi-autobiographical novel is told in sweeping episodes that eloquently describe the hidden hardships of the era. Wang paints the canvas of the end and aftermath of the cultural revolution in broad but delicate strokes that subtly reveal the fissures of humanity in the shadow of the so-called “greater good.”

Location: Walter Reade Theater

3:30 PM: Empty Nest

Director Zhang Wei’s film is a poignant tale of love, betrayal, and the search for meaning in the twilight years of life. The film follows Zhao Yimei, an elderly woman who has spent her life nursing the wounds of her husband’s betrayal. Estranged from her son and grappling with incontinence, she loses faith in life and contemplates ending it all. Enter Lei Xiaoding, a charismatic health care product salesman whose chance encounter with Zhao brings unexpected joy to her life. His humor, diligence, and warmth rekindle her belief in love and happiness. As their bond deepens, Zhao Yimei buys numerous health products from Lei, supporting his dreams of making it big in the city. However, Lei’s ambitions lead him down a dark path. Empty Nest is a powerful exploration of human connection, fortitude, and the transformative power of love in the face of life’s most challenging moments.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

6:00 PM: Miss Shampoo

Hand it to star auteur/director Giddens Ko to adapt one of his own wild short stories into a gangster-romcom mash-up ripe with his patented raunchy stylings. After a fledgling hair dresser (superstar Vivian Sung) inadvertently saves the life of a gang boss, he takes a shine to her and pretty soon she’s coifing all the young hooligans’ heads with untenable abandon. The star-crossed lovers’ courting is so brazenly frank that it revs up from zero to 60 in no time flat while her whole family cheers them on to do the deed. Running parallel with their refreshingly uncouth love story is mob vs. mob intrigue and a boisterous baseball backstory that renders this whole madcap venture a bloody and heartfelt showstopper.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

8:30 PM: A-Town Boyz

This edgy documentary is an illuminating time capsule of the immigrant struggle juxtaposed with cultural trends and socio-economic needs. With unprecedented access, the filmmakers focus on three young men who are involved in Atlanta’s vibrant hip-hop scene: Harrison “Vickz” Kim, Eugene Chung, and Jamy “Bizzy” Long. Aside from the color of their skin, their lifestyles—from clothes and speech to attitudes, dreams, and desires—are often indistinguishable from the average rapper. Yet while their individual stories all reveal a life of crime, there is an added layer of cross-cultural values, not to mention the challenge of being viewed by other Americans as less than welcome.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

Monday, July 24, 2023

6:00 PM: December

Katsu (international star Shogen) is a former novelist whose career has stalled since his teen daughter was viciously murdered by a classmate. When he learns that the killer is now being retried since she had been convicted as an adult despite being 17 at the time, he’s enraged. He enlists his ex-wife to cooperate in the prosecution’s efforts to prevent the “monster” from being released from prison early. As the couple embarks on an agonizing moral journey, they are forced to confront not only their own past mistakes, but difficult questions of punishment, the thirst for vengeance, and the price of forgiveness—especially when surprising facts are revealed. This riveting courtroom drama, written and directed by non-Japanese, wrestles with the controversial imprisonment of juvenile offenders and the gray areas of Japan’s criminal justice system, where the conviction rate is 99%. Like his award-winning Kontora, Anshul Chauhan’s new film also explores how we process grief and who deserves redemption.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

9:00 PM: Mountain Woman

As Mountain Woman opens, Rin goes about the job of helping a family dispose of a newborn. Her Tohoku village is in its second year of a devastating famine, and babies are being discarded because they are simply extra mouths to feed. Rin’s family are outcasts, and she is obliged to do the other residents’ dirty work. When a local seer declares the village cursed, Rin is chosen as the first offering to appease the gods. Fortunately, she flees to the forbidden realm of Mt. Hayachine before she can be trapped. There, her quest for survival gradually transforms into a journey to self-actualization. This haunting film (atmospherically shot in all-natural lighting by cinematographer Daniel Satinoff of Tokyo Vice) may be set in the late 18th century, but its existential tale of man vs. nature, of rural human cruelty, of generational shame, and of individual resilience in the face of impossibly harsh discrimination resonates across the centuries.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

Tuesday, July 25, 2023

3:30 PM: The Cord of Life

After learning his mother has Alzheimer’s, folktronica musician Alus whisks her away from his brother’s crowded city apartment back to his childhood home in the grasslands to look after her. While her mischievous wanderings make it a daunting task, glimmering moments of near-lucid nostalgia also bring her closer to her son. As humorous episodes ensue and an alluring neighbor enters the picture, a sudden vision of the past becomes Alus’ mother’s final wish. This sets the two off on a quixotic quest across the magnificent vistas of the steppes, stopping along the way to embrace the wondrous culture of their roots. This beautiful film juxtaposes Mongolian traditions against modern ambitions in a lyrical allegory for the impermanence of life.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

6:00 PM: A Light Never Goes Out

Recently widowed Heung (Sylvia Chang) finds a mysterious key that her husband Bill (Simon Yam), one of Hong Kong’s premier neon sign artisans, left behind. The discovery reveals that Bill’s workshop, which she thought had been long shut down, is still running and inhabited by Bill’s young apprentice. Together Heung and the apprentice set off to fulfill Bill’s dying wish: complete his magnum opus as a tribute to his life’s work. Heung’s mission not only acts as a salve for her grief but also allows for romantic flashbacks of her life with Bill as well as the heyday of the brightly lit signs that adorned Hong Kong in its most prosperous era. A Light Never Goes Out is a nostalgic lament for all of Hong Kong’s recent trials and tribulations as well as an illuminating paean to its irrepressibly bright and vibrant spirit.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

9:00 PM: Back Home

Heung Wing (Anson Kong of Cantopop sensation Mirror) left his native Hong Kong for Canada long ago, hoping to escape his ability to see ghosts. When his mother’s suicide attempt leaves her in a coma he must return to the unstable place he once called home. Back in the shoddy apartment complex where he grew up, disturbing childhood memories start flooding his mind while the tangible apparitions appear more frightening than ever. As Heung Wing witnesses more and more eerie happenings, he starts to question his own sanity while also suspecting a macabre conspiracy at work. Combining classic horror tropes with southern Chinese mythology to blur the lines between the lands of the living and the dead, director Nate Ki’s accomplished feature debut is a baroquely grotesque affair replete with spooky children, self-mutilations, human sacrifices, black magic, and other visceral manifestations of the protagonist’s troubled psyche.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

Wednesday, July 26, 2023

4:00 PM: Mayhem Girls

Imagine the already oppressed life of Japanese teenagers with the added stress of the pandemic. Buzz-killing teachers militantly enforce masks and social distancing yet neglect the repercussions of their students’ pent-up aggression. The icing on the cake? The highly anticipated end of the school year cultural festival is canceled. In this milieu a small gaggle of previously unassociated high school girls, centered around the humbly charismatic Mizuho, form a tight-knit clique when their typically adolescent hormonal changes are suddenly manifested by… supernatural powers! A brief but glorious time of the girls just hanging out and enjoying their metaphysical magic together with gleeful abandon ensues. Naturally Mizuho’s would-be romance with an unassuming ne’er-do-well older boy and the seductive trappings of avarice open a Pandora’s box of true mayhem. The whole affair is an insightful encapsulation of burgeoning adulthood dilemmas thinly veiled by a veneer of exuberantly anarchic, special effects-laden, popcorn entertainment.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

6:15 PM: 12 Weeks

Alice, a fiercely independent 40-year-old woman with a successful and noble career at an NGO, discovers she’s pregnant. On the outs with her moody, high-maintenance ex-boyfriend, and with no interest in raising a child, she jumps through the requisite hoops to arrange a safe abortion in a devoutly pro-life nation where it is illegal. The refreshingly multidimensional characters and their complex interpersonal relationships in director Anna Isabelle Matutina’s bold debut cover all the points and counterpoints of this sensitive issue. Alice’s overbearing mother and baby’s daddy relentlessly browbeat her to change her mind, further exacerbating her existential dilemma in a telling microcosm of the country’s own hypocrisies and struggles. Max Eigenmann’s award-winning star turn as Alice effortlessly drives home the urgent clarion call of Matutina’s smart and uber-timely film.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

9:00 PM: The Abandoned

The discovery of a woman’s corpse ironically saves the life of Wu Jie, a down-on-her-luck police detective whose life is falling apart. Soon more bodies and ominous clues emerge, revealing the work of a vicious serial killer targeting illegal migrant workers. With a local broker for the immigrants as a potential suspect, Wu Jie tenaciously pursues the case and finds herself vaulted from her own dire existential crisis into a harrowing realm of madness. Director Tseng Ying-ting (The Last Verse, NYAFF 2018) masterfully blends the police procedural with psychological themes and social issues into a transcendently insightful examination of the human psyche. Painting the world of The Abandoned with haunting cinematic strokes, deftly reflecting the modern malaise of a world gone wrong, he also offers a shining glimmer of hope.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

Thursday, July 27, 2023

3:30 PM: Eye of the Storm

In Lin Chun-Yang’s latest film, the stuff of nightmares becomes a reality that’s disturbingly familiar to our post-COVID times. Dr. Zheng Xia, a dedicated thoracic surgeon in Taipei, finds himself trapped in a hospital lockdown on the day of his daughter’s fifth birthday. Alongside nearly a thousand health care providers, patients, and their families, Dr. Xia faces an unprecedented crisis as an unknown deadly virus spreads within the hospital. When Jin Youzhong, a pesky journalist and one of Dr. Xia’s patients, uncovers the mysterious outbreak, he collaborates with Dr. Xia to investigate its origin. As they delve deeper, Jin discovers a shocking connection to the source of the virus. With the looming threat of infection, each character is faced with a difficult moral choice. They soon learn that during an epidemic, helping others can become the ultimate salvation. Eye of the Storm is a gripping and poignant hospital thriller that explores the power of empathy and human resilience in the face of despair.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

6:30 PM: Greenhouse

Moon Jung lives in a makeshift vinyl greenhouse as she saves up to get a proper apartment for when her son gets out of juvenile detention. She works as a caretaker for a disabled elderly couple while trying to cope with her own, often debilitating psychological troubles in a local community therapy group. As hard as she tries, nothing seems to go her way. Soon sinister situations lead to disastrous accidents until everything starts to spiral out of control. This gripping, slow-burn drama-***-thriller deftly takes on a multitude of social and human issues, digging below the surfaces of its characters’ daily appearances to reveal stark emotional truths. Recalling the work of Lee Chang-****, writer-editor-director Lee Sol-hui’s striking feature debut proves her a new visionary as she deftly balances a pervasive sense of dread with candid compassion.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

9:00 PM: Home Sweet Home

After helming two singular films (Blank 13, Zokki) movie star Takumi Saitoh (Shin Ultraman, NYAFF 2022) earns his directorial black belt with this sublime horror work. He first turns the genre on its ear, replacing the proverbial “old dark house” with a bright, prefab idyll, a glaringly ambiguous symbol of the coveted utopian dream. Yet trouble never strays too far from paradise and no sin goes unpunished. Young patriarch Kenji (Masataka Kubota from Takshi Miike’s First Love) moves his expectant wife and young daughter from a chilly, dilapidated abode into preternaturally comfortable new digs. Little do they know, the claustrophobic basement that controls the always-perfect temperature will soon ominously reflect all of their collective nightmares. Brimming with palpable paranoia and striking visual metaphors, Saitoh’s latest exposes all the pretensions and secrets that make our imperfect society so dangerously duplicitous, while creeping the bejesus out of us at the same time.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

Friday, July 28, 2023

3:30 PM: Redemption with Life

In the latest feature from NYAFF’s Filmmaker in Focus, Zhang Wei, a majestic motorcycle club snakes its way along a glorious Tibetan highway before a nested series of flashbacks reveals the plight that brought them on their profound journey. Focusing on three old friends who live by classic codes of honor and loyalty until get-rich-quick schemes threaten to tear them apart, the film plumbs the depths of capitalistic corruption and the fiercely tragic greed and hubris it ignites. As the biker buddies experience lifestyles of overindulgent excess, with nouveau riche delusions and egregious machismo marked by their brazen objectification of women and sudden bursts of violence, Zhang Wei peppers his dark meditation with exciting tropes straight out of classic Asian crime and action films, and imbues this resonant saga with a distinctly Chinese moral compass and soul-crushing pathos.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

6:00 PM: In Her Room

There are mysteries nested inside mysteries in this otherworldly erotic film, the directorial debut of veteran screenwriter Chihiro Ito (Crying Out Love in the Center of the World, Spring Snow), adapted from her own novel. Establishing herself instantly with a unique vision, Ito fully embraces the rewards of arthouse cinema’s long takes to stunning effect. Moving at a hypnotic pace, with many scenes so hushed they could almost be pantomimes, In Her Room follows a shy dentist, Dr. Susume (Satoru Iguchi, the keyboardist for J-pop sensation King Gnu), as he develops a strange relationship with a woman who lives in a lush, plant-filled apartment. The two share confidences as the vines creep over the walls and praying mantises scuttle silently. But Susume soon finds himself displaced by a female rival. Maybe. Possibly. Who really knows? This hothouse of secrets and lies is utterly beguiling, with hints of the absurd and an unforgettable soupçon of the surreal.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

9:15 PM: Faces of Anne

Holy doppelganger, is this a wild trip! What defines our true identity, and very existence for that matter? Is it the rituals of life, from education and work to social customs that give us meaning? Or is it simply our physical features that say who we truly are? In rambunctiously high-concept fashion, Faces of Anne examines all of these profound and daunting questions with nightmarish abandon. A plethora of beguiling actresses, all staking claim to the personage of Anne, meld a horror-steeped heroine’s journey with pulpy sci-fi trappings. The eponymous Anne wakes up on a strange island oppressed by scary caretakers and given a mission of survival against blood-crazed pagan demons. And how’s this for a curveball? Anne’s face changes every few minutes! This surreal odyssey is a hair-raising yet universal metaphor of all that it means to be a woman in the modern world.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

Saturday, July 29, 2023

1:30 PM: Mountain Onion

11-year-old Jabai and his younger sister Saniya find out the hard way that their parents’ marriage is on the rocks. Desperate to keep the once-happy family together, they embark on a journey to the strange and mystical land of China in quest of a magical item that will save the day. Director Eldar Shibanov looks to the eyes of children for a wryly imaginative satire of adult foibles, filling his deceptively quotidian Kazakh boondocks with lively oddballs as colorful as their quirky costumes and other random devices. And wait till the kids reach their destination! From makeshift ninjas to black-market sexual enhancers, this triumphantly anarchic ride is as hilarious as it is astute.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

4:00 PM: Flaming Cloud

Director Liu Siyi’s stunning feature debut is an exquisite homage to the Disney movies and Chinese folklore that her generation grew up on. Meticulously crafted, this modern, live-action spin on the classic fairy tale paradigm boasts the look and feel of an animated fantasy come to flesh-and-blood life. It all starts when a boy named Sangui discovers that anyone he kisses goes right to sleep. Ostracized as a freak of nature by his fellow villagers and separated from his childhood sweetheart, he embarks on a phantasmagorical journey to find her and also cure himself from this curse. Taking on grand themes such as social stigma and the power of true love to conquer all, Flaming Cloud also features some dark touches for a surprisingly grown-up morality tale of magic and romance.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

6:45 PM: Abang Adik

Undocumented orphans Abang and Adi adopted each other as brothers growing up. Their bond is inseparable, yet they couldn’t be more different. The slightly older and deaf Abang is an altruistic do-gooder while Adi is an unrestrained rascal. Abang tries to walk the straight and narrow while their social worker strives to get them the documentation they need to move their lives forward. Adi, however, gets involved in the fatal treachery of immigrant smuggling. When his pent-up aggression leads to an unspeakable act, he’s roped in and the brothers’ fates are sealed. Director Jin Ong’s remarkable award-winning debut achieves the verisimilitude and pathos of neorealism while offering a rare glimpse into Malaysian street life.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

9:30 PM: Hail to Hell

In this tar-black comedy, Na-mi and Sun-woo’s suicide pact is abruptly foiled when they find out that the bully who led them to this sorry fate is living happily ever after, far from their sleepy town. Vehemently vexed by both their own lot and their past persecutor’s good fortune, the oddball pair swear to wreak vengeance, determined to shame and expose the bully’s rotten roots, and show her for who she truly is. However, when they do find her nothing goes as expected and they end up on a wild odyssey of biblical proportions. Making her feature debut, writer-director Lim Oh-jeong presides over hilariously on-the-money performances, in an impeccably paced, twisted tale that builds to the literal blaze of the climax. This always-surprising good vs. evil comedy-drama-thriller brilliantly invokes popcorn cinema while it tackles multiple issues, from bullying to religious cults and all their attendant human fallout, with sardonic aplomb.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

Sunday, July 30, 2023

1:30 PM: Killing Romance

This year’s opening film, Killing Romance is a camera-drunk comic fantasia about a former superstar actress, Hwang Yeo-Rae (Lee Ha-Nee), trapped in a toxic marriage with egomaniacal, obscenely wealthy tycoon Jonathan Na (Lee Sun-Kyun), who wooed her while on vacation on a South Pacific island. Teaming up with her young fanboy neighbor Kim Beom-Woo (Gong Myoung), they hatch a plan to break her free from her gilded cage. From there on, alternatively horrific and hilarious episodes unfold as the two devise an ill-advised plot to kill Jonathan and reclaim Yeo-Rae’s freedom and stardom. Helmed with an adroit hand by Korean comedy’s enfant terrible, Lee Won-suk (a NYAFF regular), the film rounds up unforgettable performances that power up an electroshock of a tale, dancing between a love story, a musical, a murder plot, and a million things in between. This is peak Korean movie inventiveness.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

4:15 PM: Phantom

One of South Korea’s biggest hits of 2023, this brilliantly lensed, action-packed spy drama is set in 1933 Korea, during Japanese colonial rule, and features a cast of Korean stars speaking almost entirely in Japanese. After a failed attempt to assassinate the new Japanese resident-general in Seoul, the colonial government rounds up five suspects, each of whom might be the infamous anti-Japanese spy “Phantom.” As the five desperately attempt to prove their innocence (often by implicating one of the others) one suspect is secretly trying to capture the spy himself, to exact revenge on his old nemesis, the security chief. But it’s really the women’s show, and when Lee Hanee and Park So-dam are forced to forge a bond amidst the most hideous of male-afflicted abuse, they prove to be not only highly skilled, but unstoppable.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

7:45 PM: Closing Night Film

NYAFF Closing Night will conclude this year’s festival with a fabulous awards ceremony and the world premiere of a new all-star family-friendly animation blockbuster, to be revealed in a future announcement.

Location: Walter Reade Theater

Date: July 14 - 30, 2023

Location: Walter Reade Theater And Damrosch Park

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