68th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen – Asian Presence 2022

By Asian Film Festival on February 14, 2022 • ( Leave a comment )

We present the list of Asian* films that will compete at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (Germany), which will take place in cinemas and online from April 30th until May 9th, 2022.

*(East Asia, South Asia & Southeast Asia) – Last update: 04/17/2022

International Competition

2022 is a looping film without a beginning or ending, the audience can view the movie from any point. As an amateur filmmaker, I don’t really know montage technic, and how to edit or cut footage well. so I decided to make a one-shot movie, hoping the film is as fluent as possible.

Screening Date:
May 5, 2022 | Thursday | Lichtburg | 15:15 pm

**Gold Dragon Mountain** by Mooyoung Kim – South Korea | 2021 – 19 minutes
**Section**: International Competition 7

The film depicts the massacre of civilians in Geum-jeong-gul Cave in Gyeonggi-do in October 1950. This massacre, in which more than 153 people were killed in a village by South Korean military and police, was compensated by the South Korean government in 1993 when it became known through the efforts of the victims’ bereaved families, but there is still no place for their remains in their home town.

Screening Date:
May 8, 2022 | Sunday| Lichtburg | 15:15 pm

**Me and My Country Pornography** by Lin Htet Aung – Myanmar | 2022 – 8 minutes
**Section**: International Competition 8

That day when Maung Maung’s family was away on a trip, they broke into his house. The intruders rested a little then began to film porn. The map, old and experienced but still a bad actor, and Maung Maung who is travelling in the map, started performing intercourse.

Screening Date:
May 8, 2022 | Sunday | Lichtburg | 20:00 pm

**Mustard Greens** by Karan Talwar – India | 2021 – 10 minutes
**Section**: International Competition 8

A mother’s voice guides her son’s hands through the making of a popular Punjabi delicacy called ‘sarson ka saag’, meaning mustard greens. This is him imitating his mother’s movements, attempting to inherit broken pieces of a partitioned culture. Made on b/w 16 mm film, the film uses mustard and spices in its developing process. Physical testaments of mustard leaves and stains from spices form a gastronomical archive.

Screening Date:
May 8, 2022 | Sunday | Lichtburg | 20:00 pm

**Seeing in the Dark** by Taiki Sakpisit – Thailand, South Korea | 2021 – 29 minutes
**Section**: International Competition 7

In the wake of the 2020–2021 Thai Protests, the dictator government has deployed military information warfare, accusing the protest leaders of being communists, similar propaganda to what was used against the student activists in the 1960s and ’70s. The film meditates on the remnants of the Communist sites, the legacy of the Cold War and the ruined fortress that was once the Ministry of Treasury during WWII.

Screening Date:
May 8, 2022 | Sunday | Lichtburg | 15:15 pm

**Soapy Faggy** by Phạm Nguyễn Anh Tú – Vietnam | 2021 – 7 minutes
**Section**: International Competition 1

Bóng Xà Bông was made in my attempt to explore and understand how the brain works in terms of constructing stereotypes and processing negative information, with the focus on news-generated stereotypes of the LGBTQ community in Việt Nam. In this film, I play a gay superhero who uses his first-ever queer memory in different forms to ponder upon the power of memory.

Screening Date:
May 5, 2022 | Thursday | Lichtburg | 15:15 pm

**Someone’s Flowers** by Hikari Wajima – Japan | 2021 – 3 minutes
**Section**: International Competition 6

When I started living alone and decorating my room with flowers, I started to get excited. There are many beautiful flowers outside, but is this someone else’s property? Even if they look like weeds, they might be someone’s pleasure to pass by here, so I end up buying flowers at the florist. I wonder if flowers are something you buy with money.

Screening Date:
May 7, 2022 | Saturday | Lichtburg | 20:00 pm

**Tashi’s Sheep** by Yin Yu – China | 2021 – 27 minutes
**Section**: International Competition 5

A special sheep is shot dead. Around the searching for sheep and gun, there’s a story about hegemony in a remote village. To cover up the truth and unknown secrets on the prairie, everyone became actors and started their dramatic acting to set others up. Illegal gun-holding, poaching and other charges are all on an innocent guy. So who is the wolf and who is the sheep?

Screening Date:
May 7, 2022 | Saturday | Lichtburg | 15:15 pm

**That Day Most Eagerly Awaited** by Mark Salvatus – Philippines | 2021 – 22 minutes
**Section**: International Competition 3

That Day Most Eagerly Awaited explores the symbolism of Mount Banahaw, a mountain that comes to be a refuge and haven for people engaged in religious and spiritual activities, radical political groups and UFO chasers. These communities are waiting for the second coming of Christ, a revolution, emancipation and autonomy. A curiosity for the mystique of a mountain likened to a paradise.

Screening Date:
May 6, 2022 | Friday | 13:00 pm

International Online Competition

**7 Blinks after a Decade** by Aki Nakazawa, Shinjiro Maeda, Masakazu Saito, Toshiko Takashi, Noriyuki Kimura, Yasunori Ikeda, Muryo Homma – Japan | 2021 – 35 minutes – **Section**: International Online Competition 4

This film consists of seven pieces that were initially produced for the online movie project ‘BETWEEN YESTERDAY & TOMORROW (BYT)’, launched in 2011 and reunited in 2021, when the big catastrophe of the tsunami and the nuclear powerplant accident hit Japan and the coronavirus pandemic threatened our lives worldwide. The film presents the ongoing crisis, mentioning and comparing the situation of ten years ago.

**Blink in the Desert** by Shinobu Soejima – Japan | 2021 – 11 minutes
**Section**: International Online Competition 6

Malice comes up abruptly. As if it is blinking. Capricious like a flapping insect. One day a young hermit finds a winged insect and crushes it out of disgust. Meanwhile, the elephant sees the whole situation but says nothing. From that day on, the boy is chased by shadows of the winged insects.

**Days Of the New** by Keith Deligero – Philippines | 2021 – 19 minutes
**Section**: International Online Competition 1

Two cops, an artist, a series of murders and some weird shit. Welcome to the new world after the pandemic.

**Notes from the Periphery** by Tulapop Saenjaroen – Thailand, UK | 2021 – 14 minutes
**Section**: International Online Competition 5

Mainly shot in the peripheral areas of the ever-expanding Laem Chabang port in Chon Buri, Thailand, Notes from the Periphery interrogates the notion of territoriality, globalized networks and ownership through fragmented relations between the affected sites and communities nearby, shipping containers that become a policing tool, and the life cycle of a barnacle.

**Seeking Wombs for Rebirths** by Lin Htet Aung – Myanmar | 2021 – 25 minutes
**Section**: International Online Competition 6

A boy went to a town. He went to find his next life.

**Very, Very, Tremendously** by Guangli Liu – China, France | 2021 – 12 minutes
**Section**: International Online Competition 6

Drawing on the threads of Virtual Currency and Digital Junk, Very, Very, Tremendously seeks to discuss how the acts of production and consumption from the virtual world interact systematically with reality, whilst it also mirrors how the ‘two realities’ coexist in geopolitical conflicts.

**Walkway** by Sudha Padmaja Francis – India | 2021 – 25 minutes
**Section**: International Online Competition 1

Walkway is a non-fiction film/visual essay that meditates on the relation between women and other marginalized populations to the idea of public space. It is entirely shot on a phone and uses voiceover technique to invoke the sense of a diary/journal.

**Zhezhou** by Zhang Yui – 2021 | China – 21 minutes
**Section**: International Online Competition 3

In an extremely abstract society, fireworks are strictly prohibited and males are castrated as a means of reproduction. The protagonist is of a vague gender. S/he has experienced all the hardships that the world has endured: parting, childbirth, deprivation of social rights, bereavement and death. In the end, S/he expresses her resistance to this prejudiced society in her desolate way.

Children’s & Youth Film Competition

**A Bite of Bone** by Honemi Yano – Japan | 2021 – 10 minutes
**Section**: Children’s Film Competition (8+)

At his funeral, a little girl reflects on her last summer with her father.

**A Whisper in the Island of the Heart** by Xiaowen Wang – China, USA | 2021 – 13 minutes
**Section**: Children’s & Youth Inclusive (6+)

A little girl returns to her hometown in Tibet, where a team of doctors treat the medical condition she has had since birth. Recuperating at her grandfather’s house, she makes a new and special friend.

**Red Funeral** by Jane Zhang – China, Macau | 2022 – 15 minutes
**Section**: Youth Film Competition (12+)

Bai Lu, a 12-year-old girl in a small village in China, is forbidden to attend her beloved grandmother’s funeral as she is experiencing her first period. Bai Lu does not understand why her menstruation is considered ‘ritually unclean’. She tries to bid farewell to her grandmother in one final journey to pay homage.

**Tank Fairy** by Erich Rettstadt – Taiwan, USA | 2021 – 10 minutes
**Section**: Children’s Film Competition (10+)

Once upon a time, the magical Tank Fairy delivered tanks of gas (with plenty of sass) to the home of young Jojo, a lonely dreamer in need of a glittery godmother…

**The Principle of Sunrise** by Ye Song – China | 2021 – 5 minutes
**Section**: Youth Film Competitions (16+)

A story that takes place in a night as bright as a sapphire, containing a girl, a bird, the sun and a journey that does not exist.

For more information please visit: https://www.kurzfilmtage.de/en/

About the festival:
The International Short Film Festival Oberhausen has been part of this highly charged field for over 60 years now, as a catalyst and a showcase for contemporary developments, a forum for what are often heated discussions, a discoverer of new trends and talent, and not least as one of the most important short film institutions anywhere in the world. Some 7,000 films submitted on average per year, around 500 films shown in the festival programmes and over 1,100 accredited industry professionals are proof enough.