We take at look at the Asian shorts that will be present in the 65th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen which will take place from May 1st – 6th in Oberhausen, Germany.

As Usual by Kuan-Wen Liu – Taiwan | 2018 – 7 min.

As she nears the age of 30, Rina still tries to find, with some difficulty, a path to becoming a film director. This year, her father Richard, whom she misses dearly, sends his favourite animal and Chinese zodiac sign, the tiger, to silently listen and follow his daughter through her unsteady life.

Dream Delivery by Yuan Zheng – China | 2018 – 9 min.

The images and story in ‘Sky City’ both come from my daydream, which has been haunting me for years. After I finished the film, the daydream was gone. For me, it’s a closure.

F(X) by Naveen Padmanabha – India | 2019 – 25 min.

Pickle Plum Parade by Eri Sasaki – Japan | 2019 – 4 min.

Roberth Fuentes uses his body to perform and the camera as a tool to not only document and make films, but to tell a story of himself and his community. Roberth deals with the many issues facing him and his community including environmental issues, specifically garbage and plastic in our oceans.

Sky City by Su Zhong – China | 2019 – 9 min.

An exhausted delivery man is lying on a park bench, deep asleep. In a dream he finds himself in a Shanzhai park with his fellows: they have all turned into still statues in contrast to their everyday exhaustion in the pursuit of speed and efficiency. The presence of these new labors shows the other side of China’s delirious economic progress, and the close-ups temporarily conceal the fact that they are hardly noticed in reality.

Squirtle by Hujung Kim – South Korea | 2019 – 9 min.

Beginning with the students from Satsuma and Choshu in Bakumatsu-era Japan, ‘Student Bodies’ considers the student body as both collective and singular, metaphor and flesh, standing in for the body politics of East and Southeast Asia as it mutates across the successive periods of ‘miraculous’ development, crisis and recovery. Such monstrous transformations are given voice by unseen ‘ghosts’ whose utterances are comprehensible only through the subtitles.

Student Bodies by Rui An Ho – Singapore | 2019 – 26 min.

A temple and a market are located in a special place, where religion and everyday life are in harmony. The film shows one day of the common life of people and cats in this place.

The American Bull by Fatemeh Tousi – Iran | 2018 – 15 min.

The inhabitants of a border village between Iran and Iraq live from cattle breeding. Saheb, a teenage boy, owns the only American bull. He is heavily dependent on his bull as he earns his money through its servicing for breeding.

The Beginning by Sandeep Kumar Verma – India | 2018 – 20 min.

After their divorce, Aibek’s parents send their son to a boarding school, where he falls in love with Ainura. As a sign of his love he makes her a heart of stone. He has to faces many challenges before everything takes an unexpected turn.

The farewell by Karash Janyshov – Kyrgyzstan | 2018 – 15 min.

“Aarambh” tells a universal story about one of humanity’s fundamental questions: What happens after death? The question is asked by many philosophers, theologians and the like, but in “Aarambh” the audience follows a child’s search for the answer.

The Horrible Thirty: Me, My Father and Richard the Tiger by Rina Tsou
Taiwan | 2018 – 20 min.

Late at night, a lonely high school girl tries to fish a plush squirt from a claw cran. When her wallet is empty, she takes an envelope full of money out of her jacket.

Waste (Basura) by Roberth Fuentes – Philippines | 2018 – 5 min.

Roberth Fuentes uses his body to perform and the camera as a tool to not only document and make films, but to tell a story of himself and his community. Roberth deals with the many issues facing him and his community including environmental issues, specifically garbage and plastic in our oceans.