The Diplomat
From the 27th of October to the 7th of November, Casa Asia presents the 9th Asian Film Festival Barcelona | AFFBCN, with a programme that this year will be screened mostly in person and the rest online.
The festival, which coincides with the celebration of Casa Asia’s 20th anniversary, will screen a total of 138 films from 26 countries. It is an inclusive cinema that takes diversity and multiculturalism as its starting point and focuses on the most recent social, identity and political changes on the extensive Asian map. This is the focus of this ninth edition, which in turn reaffirms Casa Asia’s commitment for Barcelona to have a unique festival specialising in the best current filmography of the continent.
With the screening of these films, the spectator will be able to embark on a journey from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, to Iran, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Bhutan, China and Hong Kong, passing through Macao, Mongolia, Korea, Japan, Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Laos, Indonesia and Vietnam, until reaching Australia and New Zealand.
The venues for this year’s Festival are CaixaForum, Cinemes Girona, the French Institute and the Filmoteca de Catalunya, while the Filmin film platform will host the online programme.
This year’s highlights include the opening film Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (2021), by Japanese filmmaker Ryusuke Hamaguchi, whose Drive my Car (2021, winner of the Best Screenplay award at the last Cannes Film Festival, will also be screened. Both films will soon be released in Spain after winning awards at several festivals.
The Festival’s programme includes 14 Iranian films produced in 2020 and 2021; 15 titles from India in 2020 and 2021, with a single exception in 2019; Filipino cinema, Japanese cinema and new cinema from China and Korea, as well as from all the countries that will be present at the festival. For its director, Menene Gras Balaguer, “it is a plural and representative cinema of the geographical, political, economic and cultural diversity of an unequal continent”.
One of the new features this year is the New Talents Hong Kong section, which will be run by the Hong Kong International Film Festival (HKIFF) and will offer 10 feature films by new talents in Hong Kong cinema. The festival will also include in its programme the Retrospective dedicated, on this occasion, to Satyajit Ray (Calcutta, India, 1921), which will be held as it is every year in collaboration with the Filmoteca de Catalunya. All the information on the festival and its programme can be found at this link.
