These are ten films you shouldn’t miss at the San Diego Asian Film Festival which will take place from November 2 – 11, 2023 in San Diego, USA.

Come Home, My Child by Jasmine Chinghui Lee – Taiwan | 2023 – 91 minutes | World Premiere
In this powerful documentary, Mama Yang, an 84-year-old woman living in New York, finds herself in correspondence with 45 high security prison inmates she views as her own children. Most are Chinese American immigrants, and see in Mama Yang a mother figure they never knew before they stepped through prison walls.

For Mama Yang though, the story is about more than Christian charity. She had already lived a full life in Taiwan when her husband died at age sixty and her son lost their house in a financial blunder. She moved to the US to start anew and lives with a Taiwanese American granddaughter that remains distant. In a film marked by family separations, Mama Yang writes letters – whether to the incarcerated or to her own granddaughter – to heal lifetimes of wounds.

Director Jasmine Ching-Hui Lee (Money and Honey, SDAFF, ‘12) continues to profile the extraordinary women on the fringes of Taiwan, spending years following Mama Yang, her granddaughter and peers, and the faceless friends she’s made along the way. – Neha Pearce (SDAFF 2023)

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Evil Does Not Exist by Ryusuke Hamaguchi – Japan | 2023 – 105 minutes
Mizubiki Village is far enough from Tokyo that its residents can enjoy fresh river water and share open spaces with native deer. It’s close enough though that it’s targeted as the site of a new “glamping” development spearheaded by a Tokyo talent agency. Anticipating pushback, the talent agency sends two lackeys to Mizubiki to take questions from locals, who raise serious questions about the site’s environmental impact. At the center of the resistance is the town handyman, the jack-of-all-trades Takumi who becomes their reluctant leader.

On paper, we have a classic showdown between urban and rural, corporation and the common man. As eluded by its enigmatic title though, EVIL DOES NOT EXIST doesn’t see the world in neat binaries. Directed by the incomparable Ryusuke Hamaguchi (Happy Hour, SDAFF ’15; Drive My Car, SDAFF ’21), this is an ecological drama whose stakes are primarily human in all of its mesmerizing opacity, where motivations are as indecipherable as the silence of trees. But Hamaguchi is never nostalgic. Hamaguchi brings us into Takumi’s life of log cutting and teaching his 8-year-old daughter about nature, less to romanticize an idyllic existence than to inhabit psychological shades of grey in a sea of wintry white. Once we dispense with romance and evil, we’re unmoored from moral judgments and economic explanations, and left only with the landmines planted just beneath the snow. – Brian Hu (SDAFF 2023)

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Monster by Hirokazu Kore-eda – Japan | 2023 – 126 minutes
An apartment fire rages in the night. It won’t be the last time we see this fire, and each revisit will come with new questions. At the core is an elementary teacher Hori who may or may not have frequented the hostess bar in the burning building. Gossip soon spreads amongst the parents, including Saori, who alleges that Hori has verbally and physically abused her son Minato at school. The administration denies the allegations, making Saori ever more frustrated and helpless.

Then, Sakamoto Yuji’s screenplay rewinds. We see the events play out from Hori’s perspective, complicating Saori’s account and shining a different light on the classroom and its students. There is a third section too, opening yet another window, one that is simultaneously unexpected, liberating, and tender. That the third section is told from the perspective of the kids should come as no surprise to fans of director Hirokazu Kore-eda (Shoplifters, SDAFF ’18), cinema’s greatest director of children, who doesn’t infantilize or fetishize innocence, but takes seriously the curiosity and passions that animate it.

To the contemplative piano of the late Ryuichi Sakamoto in his final film score, MONSTER walks us through the fiery side-taking that’s sent rifts throughout society, and then offers a third way. In the footsteps of children, from their classrooms to their secret hideouts, Kore-eda escapes down a possibility as daring as hope. – Brian Hu (SDAFF 2023)

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Nowhere Near by Miko Revereza – Mexico, Philippines, USA | 2023 – 95 minutes | World Coast Premiere
Filmed over six years in Los Angeles, NYC, the Midwest, the Philippines, and Mexico, Miko Revereza’s latest documentary tracks both his struggles with statelessness and his creative evolution as a filmmaker – embracing ever more experimentation, irony, and complexity. Where No Data Plan (SDAFF ’19) was a model of simplicity – a single train trip across the United States – NOWHERE NEAR restlessly reinvents and reorients itself as it goes. Revereza is thinking with and through editing, discovering new ways to synthesize the puzzle-pieced places and times he carries along with him.

One piece: Revereza follows his lola back to their familial home in Pangasinan – a place she now barely recognizes. She takes him to the church where her father is buried but can’t find the grave – all the stones seem to have moved. Another piece: he goes to the Mall of The Americas, and it all reminds him of the Philippines: the potted palm trees, the giant Lego statues that reference US imperialism, and the concentric circles of mall architecture that eerily mirror the digital family tree he drew for his lola.

Each of these moments resonate with each other, and Revereza as our narrator moves from goofy jokes to meta-commentary on filmmaking to painful memories and insights. The film culminates in a gorgeous double-exposure sequence, an ecstatic vision of the way every place is always something and somewhere else. With NOWHERE NEAR, Revereza is far beyond documenting his life. He’s cutting it into pieces, shining a light through, and watching the kaleidoscope change. – Lev Kalman (SDAFF 2023)

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One Second Ahead, One Second Behind by Nobuhiro Yamashita – Japan | 2023 – 119 minutes | North American Premiere
Hajime has always been one second faster than everyone else. His eyes are never open in any of his school portraits, and he wakes up before his alarm goes off. A self-described loser, Hajime (Masaki Okada) is super awkward when it comes to interacting with women he finds attractive. As he confesses to a radio show host, the women he likes make the first move but they also dump him just as quickly. Could making a first move with busker Sakurako (Rion Fukumuro) give him a chance at lasting romance?

“Plain-looking” and lonely Reika (Kaya Kiyohara), on the other hand, has always been one second behind everyone else. When Reika comes into Hajime’s post office branch every day to buy a single stamp, Hajime hardly notices her, let alone remembers her from their past.

A remake of the Taiwanese hit My Missing Valentine (2021 SDAFF Spring Showcase), ONE SECOND AHEAD, ONE SECOND BEHIND is the latest comedy from award-winning director Nobuhiro Yamashita (Linda Linda Linda, SDAFF ’15; Over the Fence, SDAFF ’16). Staying largely faithful to Chen Yu-hsun’s script while flipping the genders of the characters, Yamashita’s winning remake is a love letter to Kyoto and all of the lost people whom the universe will bring together in just the nick of time. – Wilda Wong (SDAFF 2023)

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Onlookers by Kimi Takesue – USA | 2023 – 72 minutes | World Coast Premiere
There is a scene near the end of Kimi Takesue’s languid observational documentary ONLOOKERS that mirrors a scene from her previous film Where Are You Taking Me? (SDAFF ‘11). In both, a fixed camera records schoolchildren walking by, curiously gazing back at the lens, confronting its imposing presence with varying degrees of audaciousness. However, while the earlier film documented various scenes of everyday life in Uganda, Takesue’s latest turns her camera onto Laos and the cultural and economic dynamics embedded in its tourism industry. Takesue’s documentary work has consistently interrogated the act of looking and the role of the camera, particularly within contexts of intercultural exchange between foreigner and native, while also never letting herself off the hook.

But this film isn’t necessarily merely about evil tourists and an exploited class of locals who are always ready to offer themselves up as photographic subjects – that would be too easy. Instead, Takesue foregrounds place, humorously juxtaposing scenes of tourist and local recreational sites and the different ways that various people inhabit it. ONLOOKERS implicates the viewer in the act of watching people watch people, and invites us to rethink the ways that we consume the places we visit, the selfies we take when we’re there, and the films we watch from the comforts of home. – Justin Nguyen (SDAFF 2023)

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Sleep by Jason Yu – Korea | 2023 – 95 minutes
Hyunsoo and Soojin are living a newlywed couple’s dream: chasing after goals together, raising a fluffy dog, expecting a new baby.

But danger creeps into their life when Hyunsoo (Lee Sun-kyun, Parasite) suddenly announces in his sleep that someone is inside their home. It could just be sleep-talking, except it turns out he might have been right. When Hyunsoo starts sleep-eating raw meat, sleep-scratching his face with abandon, and sleep-threatening the safety of their family, Soojin’s sleepless nights become filled with full-on anxiety, even after a doctor calmly diagnoses him with a curable sleeping disorder. As Soojin (Jung Yu-mi, Train to Busan) begins to suspect Hyunsoo’s sleepwalking may have supernatural causes, a once-unbreakable domestic bond morphs into a claustrophobic nightmare, challenging Soojin’s belief that their love can overcome all.

Fresh from Cannes, mixing fantasy, horror, and gripping mystery, director Jason Yu’s directorial debut adds a new twist to the domestic drama, reimagining one couple’s conflict as a taut Badabook-like horror thriller. – Alissa Tu (SDAFF 2023)

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Small Fry by Park Joongha – Korea | 2023 – 95 minutes | West Coast Premiere
SMALL FRY takes us on a journey with Hojoon, a 40-something actor lost amidst the big fish of showbiz. Rebranding himself as Hosama, he becomes a splash as an influencer in YouTube’s fishing community. A botched audition drives him to seek solace at his beloved fishing nook. Yet these waters are anything but stagnant as fate swims him back into the orbit of a director he once aspired to impress. Into this swirling mix swims Heejin, an actress with her own stream of dreams. Except these waters aren’t uncharted: their life currents have intertwined before but under different tides.

Steered by the deft hand of Park Joongha, SMALL FRY mirrors life’s gentle eddies more than its tempestuous waves. Central to its heart is the art of fishing in all its iterations: Hojoon’s endeavor to reel in the director’s recognition, the director’s nuanced navigation for Heejin’s affections, and Heejin’s drive to secure a role in the director’s magnum opus. While its thematic waters might appear calm at first glance, the film dives deep with unforeseen twists and engaging dialogue, ensuring viewers remain baited.

Charting a course between the world of indie film and the expansive ocean of digital content, SMALL FRY heralds the dreams lurking just below the surface, waiting for the perfect moment of the catch. – Anthony Yooshin Kim (SDAFF 2023)

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Tiger Stripes by Amanda Nell Eu – Malaysia, France, Germany, Indonesia, Netherlands, Qatar, Singapore, Taiwan | 2023 – 95 minutes
Rumor has it that there’s a monster hiding in the bathroom.

Twelve-year old Zaffan is confident and bold, and the first among her friends to start her period, which happens to come with other strange appendages: a tail, stripes, and claws. In a society where periods are stigmatized, this metamorphosis only complicates puberty.

Caught in a war between girlish playfulness and a massacring want to be the community’s feared evil, Zaffan camouflages her monstrosity with colorful stickers, filtered selfies, and viral TikTok dances – anything to get away from the shame and humiliation of periods. But her gnawing desire for wildness begs to be unleashed for everyone to witness.

As the film shifts between adolescent antics and monstrous dread, Zaffan’s expedited villainhood illuminates a gendered experience. However, instead of demonizing periods, TIGER STRIPES transforms menstruation into a legend where one embraces the beast within. Inspired by folklore and mythology, director Amanda Nell Eu subverts the outcast archetype into a bloodthirsty coming-of-age horror that embraces a girl’s period and basks in feminine rage, wrath, and beauty. – Alissa Tu (SDAFF 2023)

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Youth (Spring) by Wang Bing – France, Luxembourg, Netherlands | 2023 – 215 minutes | West Coast Premiere
20 years after Wang Bing’s monumental, 9½ hour West of the Tracks introduced the world to the most committed chronicler of 21st century China, the master documentarian of Ta’ang (SDAFF ‘16) and Dead Souls (SDAFF ‘18) announces another magnum opus to brush the ten-hour mark: a trilogy of films about the young people who make annual migrations to the factory town of Zhili. Following the college-aged workers over five years, Wang Bing and his team became regular fixtures in their lives, stationing in factories that also serve as dormitories, collecting 2,600 hours of footage.

This year brings part one, the 3-hour YOUTH (SPRING), a window into the spirited, frisky young men and women who sew kids’ clothes while blaring pop songs, dishing jokes, flirting endlessly, and speaking up about insufficient wages. Unlike the colossal sweatshops common in western documentaries about the dehumanization of Chinese labor, the factories here are small, privately-owned businesses more resembling densely-packed office spaces, inviting an uncommon warmth and familiarity. The teenagers aren’t ants in extreme long shots, but expressive faces and bodies at work and play. Their lives aren’t aestheticized, sensationalized, or mined for drama. For Wang Bing, our emotional engagement is the accumulation of time spent in the rhythm of their banter, the restless energy of their aspirations, and the constant clanking of their sewing machines. By the end of SPRING, a season in their lives feels as familiar as the air, and as the workers head back to their hometowns, we anxiously await the next installment. – Brian Hu (SDAFF 2023)

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For more information, please visit: https://sdaff.org/2023/