These are eight Asian films you shouldn’t miss at the Film Fest Gent which will take place from October 10 – 21, 2023 in Ghent, Belgium.

Art College 1994 by Liu Jian – China | 2023 – 118 minutes
Does suffering make a good artist? This is just one of the many reflections in this nostalgia trip through the dreams and disillusions of students at an art school in China in the 1990s, a time when the country was opening up to the West. For a lot of young people, it turned out to be both a blessing and a curse, as the tug-of-war between tradition and modernity intensified. Liu Jian’s third feature – in hand-painted 2D animation – is a semi-autobiographical portrait of a microcosm that weaves together conversations about Marcel Duchamp, Nirvana, the (non)sense of art, but also about friendship and the family duty to marry rather than have a career. With an infectious Linklater-like charm and voices from filmmakers Jia Zhangke and Bi Gan (among others), Liu Jian takes a critical approach towards art academies that preach freedom but actually restrict it. Ironically, Art College 1994 was drawn by a team of teachers and students at the China Academy of Art where Liu teaches as a professor. (FFG 2023)

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Gift by Ryûsuke Hamaguchi – Japan |2023 – 80 minutes
A world premiere at this year’s Film Fest Gent and VIDEODROOM! Japanese composer Eiko Ishibashi will present her new project GIFT: involving her live performance and a brand-new film by Japanese director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, whose previous film – Drive My Car, also with music by Ishibashi – won the Oscar for Best International Film. She returns to the WSA this year, where her music will be performed live by Brussels Philharmonic. The duo’s new collaboration is a silent film completely supported by Ishibashi’s dynamic live performance. GIFT evolved in conjunction with Hamaguchi’s latest feature film, Evil Does Not Exist, which provided the source material for the silent film in GIFT. In GIFT we follow Takumi and his daughter who lead a modest life in the village in the middle of nature. One day Takumi receives word that there are plans to build a glamping site near his home. The discovery that wastewater will be piped into the village’s water source not only causes unrest among the residents, but also affects Takumi’s life. (FFG 2023)

Past Lives by Celine Song – USA, Korea | 2023 – 106 minutes
Nora and Hae Sung, two Korean children, are two deeply connected friend. Their future lies with each other, so it seems. Until Nora emigrates to Toronto with her parents and later pursues her creative dream in New York. More than decades after saying goodbye in South Korea, the duo is reunited in the Big Apple, only now Nora is married to Arthur, an American writer. Together, they muse on the “what ifs”, the lost but also the won opportunities. After all, life is full of roads not taken. Playwright Celine Song manages to capture that ultimate melancholy in her semi-autobiographical debut feature, a subversive love story that combines the longings ofIn the Mood for Love and the eloquent dialogues of Linklater’s Before trilogy. Song goes beyond romance and the age-old clichéd question “who does she end up with?” to arrive at something much more human. (FFG 2023)

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Perfect Days by Wim Wenders – Japan | 2023 – 125 minutes
Named after the famous Lou Reed song, Perfect Days gives an insight into the daily life and work of a man called Hirayama. He seems perfectly happy with his seemingly simple existence in Tokyo. The arrive of his niece Niko may teach us a little more about the closeted man. Lead actor Kôji Yakusho conquered Cannes with his serene performance and was given the prize for best actor in the official competition. For director Wim Wenders – also present at FFG with the 3D portrait Anselm – this tender character study marked a return to Japan almost forty years after the documentary Tokyo-Ga about master filmmaker Yasujirō Ozu. The spirit of Ozu shines through in the film’s bittersweet, wholesome and quiet beauty that captures small gestures and pleasures with great empathy and clarity. Just as Hirayama catches the sunlight on camera through the foliage of trees. (FFG 2023)

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Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus by Neo Sora – Japan | 2023 – 103 minutes
Last spring, the Japanese musician and composer Ryuichi Sakamoto passed away. Cancer had kept him away from the stage for years. However, at the end of the year, he gathered all his energy to play one final concert, albeit without an audience. He performed twenty songs spanning his musical career: from his time with pop trio Yellow Magic Orchestra to his film scores (such as The Last Emperor, for which he won an Oscar), to his latest, fully refined album 12. Although not a word is spoken, the emotions are palpable. Sakamoto often said that the piano was an extension of his hands. With that in mind, director Neo Sora, Sakamoto’s son, filmed his father during this last performance. Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus is the most beautiful epitaph a musician can imagine. (FFG 2023)

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The Boy and the Heron by Hayao Miyazaki – Japan | 2023 – 124 minutes
A young boy named Mahito yearning for his mother ventures into a world shared by the living and the dead. There, death comes to an end, and life finds a new beginning. A semi-autobiographical fantasy about life, death and creation, in tribute to friendship, from the mind of Hayao Miyazaki. – Tegan Vevers (BFI LondonFF 2023)

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The Breaking Ice by Anthony Chen – China, Singapore | 2023 – 97 minutes
When Haofeng misses his flight, he meets the bubbly tour guide Nana and her best friend Xiao on the border between China and North Korea. With an empathic nod to the French nouvelle vague, Singaporean filmmaker Anthony Chen’s The Breaking Ice chronicles the emotionally layered and sexually charged encounter between three lonely souls. Peering into existential angst, the twenty-somethings seem to face a permanent dilemma. Can a night out or a spontaneous road trip still remedy those feelings of melancholic loneliness, or does that just make it all the more awkward? With a delicate gaze and a refreshing soundtrack, Chen portrays a Chinese generation that, wandering through murky meaninglessness and frozen landscapes, gently connects with the humanity of others. (FFG 2023)

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Youth (Spring) by Wang Bing – Netherlands, France, Luxembourg | 2023 – 215 minutes
Not with one film, but with two films, Wang Bing broke a five-year silence at Cannes earlier this year – exceptionally long for a director who spent the previous ten years delivering an average of one documentary a year. Thanks to features like West of the Tracks and Fengming, a Chinese Memoir, he is one of this century’s most acclaimed documentarians. The two new films, Man in Black and Youth (Spring) confirm that reputation. In the latter, filmed over a six-year period, Wang offers a look at the gruelling work of employees of China’s clothing-manufacturing workshops. Most are relatively young rural workers who travel several thousand kilometres just to be exploited. With a sense of detail, Wang films their labour-ridden lives in his beloved fly-on-the-wall style. 2600 hours of footage have been boiled down to a three-and-a-half-hour epic. (FFG 2023)

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For more information, please visit: https://www.filmfestival.be/en