These are the Asian films that will be screened at the Mar del Plata International Film Festival which will take place from November 2 – 12, 2023 in Mar del Plata, Argentina.

Note: This list may include movies made by filmmakers with Asian ancestry.

Devils by Kim Jae-hoon – Korea | 2023 – 106 minutes
For years, detective Jae-hwan has been obsessed with catching Jin-hyuk, the serial killer responsible for the death of his partner and brother-in-law, even if the path to revenge means skipping a few rules. But, when the much-delayed encounter finally comes, things don’t go at all as expected—after a chase and a muddled accident and having been missing for a month, Jae-hwan wakes up handcuffed to a hospital bed, only to discover that he’s trapped in Jin-hyuk’s body and that, in turn, the killer is taking his place alongside his family. But this is only the starting point to a sinuous, extreme narrative filled with surprising twists and tinged the red of blood and neon lights. In his brutal debut, Kim Jae-hoon appropriates the body switch trope in order to give shape to a feast for genre film lovers. (MDPFF 2023)

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In Our Day by Hong Sangsoo – Korea | 2023 – 84 minutes
Hong Sangsoo’s work can be thought of as a game of theme and variations and a permanent exercise in polishing; as though, at every step of the way, he were asking himself what remains in his films when stripping them of the superfluous more and more. In In Our Day (his 30th film!), the anecdote is minimal and is built like a mirror—on the one hand, an actress who has just returned to Korea and is staying with a friend (and her cat) is visited by a young woman in search of advice; on the other, an older poet receives a female student who’s shooting a documentary on him and a fervent admirer. In the middle, there are talks about art and life, although a character reminds us that we don’t have to force our search for sense—Hong escapes, closure and easy metaphors as always, with humor, and finds a more meandering and -for that very reason- more powerful path to move us. (MDPFF 2023)

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Mimang by Kim Taeyang – Korea | 2023 – 92 minutes
More than once, the protagonists in Mimang wonder where they are and where they’re going—it is a concrete, geographical question born from walking around the streets of Seoul, but as the film progresses, that urban journey also proves to be an existential one. We accompany the characters in some stretches of their path—many years separate each of the episodes that make up the film, and that distance reveals changes through what remains. This is not a film about earthquakes, but about small transformations, and the marks of time can be seen not only in the actors’ bodies, but also in that other omnipresent protagonist that is Seoul, whose vitality invades every shot. Like others before him (it’s inevitable to think about Truffaut or Linklater), here, Kim Taeyang reminds us that cinema is the best time machine that has been invented so far.(MDPFF 2023)

Night Walk by Sohn Koo-yong – Korea | 2023 – 65 minutes
Windows like eyes, a meandering alley, a cat going for a walk, the cloudy sky, a shaky reflection, the flow of a stream—Night Walk is a film made of small, nightly, monochrome, silent landscapes. In it, the world seems to become abstract at times, like the lines in those mysterious drawings that emerge in the shot. In this journey, the urban and the natural join the same way as cinema and poetry. And not only because of the fragments from poems about the Joseon dynasty that appear in the images -inviting us to think of how others, in other times, have also surrendered to the contemplation of the world-, but also because the film itself seems to take the form of a visual poem, with its rhythm and rhymes. Night Walk is an invitation to observe, to enter another time, to feel how the everyday transforms through the gaze.(MDPFF 2023)

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Partió de mí un barco llevándome (A Boat Departed from Me Taking Me Away) by Cecilia Kang – Argentina, Singapore | 2023 – 80 minutes
In the ranks of the Japanese army during WWII, there existed what was known as comfort women. In the present, that term was replaced by a definition that is closer to reality—they were women who had been kidnapped and turned into sex slaves. After a long period of humiliation, the victims remained quiet, but some of them built up the courage to write about their ordeals in a series of letters. Cecilia Kang’s new documentary recovers those testimonies in order to talk about the way in which History and social mandates affect the lives of Korean women in Argentina, from the perspective of a young acting student who, after coming into contact with this correspondence, allows herself to reflect on the community she lives in and understand more about the traditions of her people as well as her own family history. (MDPFF 2023)

Shortcomings by Randall Park – USA | 2022 – 92 minutes
In 2007, Randall Park was playing minor roles in film and television, and hadn’t yet become the supporting actor that would later shine in the so-called New American Comedy. While participating on frustrating auditions, he bumped into Adrian Tomine’s graphic novel, which ended up becoming one of his favorites. After more than fifteen years of obsession, he was able to fulfill his dream of taking it to the big screen. The story centers around Ben, a snobbish film buff with serious problems when dealing with his relationships, especially with his girlfriend and her best friend, with whom he has long talks about current events, even though the heart of this powerful first feature is closer to those explorations of binds that turn mumblecore into a genre that is still being paid tribute to.(MDPFF 2023)

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Youth (Spring) by Wang Bing – France, Luxemburg, Netherlands | 2023 – 212 minutes
The protagonists of Wang Bing’s latest documentary are young textile workers from one of the main industrial centers in China. In workshops where silence seems to be a superstition, make clothes 15 hours a day in deplorable conditions and for a minimum wage. Despite being far from their homes, alienation is not a path for them to take, and they begin to establish bonds—love and friendships -as well as hate and fighting- pierce each and every one of their interactions. Bing’s camera not only becomes a ghost that captures every admissible space; it’s also faithful to the conditions of the world it depicts and never establishes a direct way to understand it. Youth (Spring) is not a cynical film, and it never resorts to misanthropy. The director is a rara avis—he still believes in people and in a cinema capable of highlighting their virtues, even in very oppressive contexts. (MDPFF 2023)

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For more information, please visit: https://www.mardelplatafilmfest.com/38/es/