We present the winners of the Osaka Asian Film Festival which took place from March 1 – 10, 2024 in Osaka, Japan

Grand Prix – Best Picture Award

City of Wind by Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir – France, Mongolia, Portugal, Netherlands, Germany, Qatar | 2023 – 103 minutes

Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir’s feature debut tells the story of Ze, a 17-year-old high-school boy who just also happens to be a shaman for his village. People go to him for advice from ancestral spirits and he is treated with respect for the most part. However, there is Maralaa, a girl who awakens his desires and who is VERY sceptical of him when her mother takes her for blessings on the eve of her hospitalisation. In a case of opposites attract, Ze falls for Maralaa and visits her in hospital where the two express their dreams and desires: she wants to live in the countryside while he would like to live in the modern capital of Ulaanbaatar. Thus, Ze begins to reckon with the question of how to follow his dreams while adhering to traditions. [Jason MAHER]

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Most Promising Talent Award

Lien Chien Hung for Salli – Taiwan, France | 2023 – 105 minutes

Ever since the death of their parents, Hui-jun has been too busy looking after her little brother and their family chicken farm to look after herself or go dating. With her younger brother’s wedding approaching and being 38, people are talking about her status as a single lady. She surprises everyone when she starts an online romance through an app under the name “Salli.” Her beau is a Frenchman named Martin and she is smitten but people are sceptical of his existence and intentions. To prove to everyone that their love is genuine, Hui-jun embarks on her first overseas trip by going to Paris to find him… [Jason MAHER]

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ABC Tv Award

Salli by Lien Chien Hung– Taiwan, France | 2023 – 105 minutes

Yakushi Pearl Award

Chi Yun for Unborn Soul (dir. Zhou Zhou) – Australia, China | 2024 – 77 minutes

Qing Chen is carrying a child and a lot of pressure. She is looking after a student who has had an unplanned pregnancy and an uncle with cerebral palsy who is at risk of being kicked out of a nursing home. Costs are mounting and time is short but she and her husband are getting by, just about. When she receives news that her baby has a 70% chance of being born disabled, it ignites a crisis in her marriage as Qing Chen and her husband argue over the fate of their unborn baby who is observing everything sympathetically. [Jason MAHER]

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JAPAN CUTS Award

Performing Kaoru’s Funeral by Yuasa Noriko – Japan, Spain, Singapore | 2023 – 100 minutes

When a screenwriter named KAORU dies suddenly, she leaves behind a tangle of relations who are all pulled together for the final act in her life: performing her funeral. The chief mourner is her ex-husband, Jun. A failed actor, he drifts around Tokyo as a driver for callgirls. He has to clean himself up to lead the ceremony down in the small village in Okayama that KAORU came from. There, he meets a host of eccentric characters, TV people, and KAORU ’s daughter, all of whom have complicated feelings for the recently departed. As can be guessed, the funeral becomes chaotic as people quarrel and fight but the fact that KAORU was loved is not in doubt as nostalgia, bitterness, and affection for the woman come out from each mourner in comic confrontations.  (OAFF 2024)

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JAPAN CUTS Award – Special Mention

Blue Imagine by Matsubayashi – Urara – Japan, Philippines, Singapore | 2024 – 93 minutes

Noel is an aspiring actress and a victim of sexual assault. When she enters “Blue Imagine,” a share house for women who have been abused or harassed, she begins a slow process of renewing her confidence, helped along by the camaraderie found with other inhabitants who have suffered similar experiences. Gradually, she regains her courage and begins to speak out for herself and others even in the face of prejudice aimed at women. When the director who assaulted her is accused of abuse by another woman, Noel decides to confront her past. [Jason MAHER]

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Housen Short Film Award

Sojourn to Shangri-la by Lin Yihan – China | 2023 – 19 minutes

Sojourn in Shangri-la amusingly shows the behind-the-scenes indignity of a glamorous fashion shoot on a beach gone awry as a put-upon art assistant named Cal is tasked with rescuing an installation swallowed by the sea. With models waiting on instructions, finance guys on the phone, and a director on the warpath, Cal faces off against on-set hierarchies, petty technicians, and time itself as she tries to track down the structure. Her tireless efforts will see her situation become tinged by the supernatural, a sense richly evoked by director LIN Yihan’s choice to shoot in luminous black and white, the look of which lends proceedings an otherworldly atmosphere as the film segues from the mundane to the surreal. [Jason MAHER]

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Housen Short Film Award – Special Mentions

On a Boat by Heso – Japan | 2024 – 32 minutes

Have you ever met a couple and thought, “what do they see in each other?”

Perhaps people who make up such couples never really look at each other to begin with. This might be the case with SARA and CHU. He is 12 years older than her and, thanks to him, SARA now has a new home. SARA just has to be in love because CHU seems nice but exhibits possessive behaviour. Everything in his house has to be “just so” otherwise he gets petty and vindictive. SARA has a difficult night ahead as a house-warming party with her “friends” takes a nasty turn when CHU realises that SARA and co cannot be managed like objects… [Jason MAHER]

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Sweet Lime by Fatema Abdoolcarim – Hong Kong, UK | 2023 – 11 minutes

The ability of children to understand and adapt is often underestimated and that is an idea explored in Sweet Lime as a ten-year-old girl named Amra sits in the back seat of her mother’s car on the drive from collecting her aunt Hawra from the airport. She is alternately ignored and left to listen to the women discuss marriage woes and family gossip or fussed over because she is too “vulnerable.” At a critical moment, during a pause on their journey, she discovers a tragic secret relating to one of the adults and faces a weighty choice as to how to handle it… [Jason MAHER]

Audience Award

Amalock by Nakamura Kazuhiro – Japan | 2024 – 119 minutes

39-year-old Yuko is a high-achieving and proud woman whose career ambitions took her from a sleepy part of Amagasaki City, to Tokyo. When she loses her job due to her “high standards” attitude, she loses her drive to do anything and ends up retreating to her family home where she lives as a NEET with her laidback joker of a father, Ryutaro. For years, the two get along until her 70-something old man brings home Saki, his 20-year-old bride-to-be. When the younger woman shacks up with the two, a comedy of manners based, quite understandably, on a scandalised Yuko’s “you’re not my mom!” attitude ensues as the younger woman takes to mothering her but when crises occur, Yuko truly begins to evaluate just what a family can be. [Jason MAHER]

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More information: https://oaff.jp/en/