Udine Far East Film Festival Celebrates 25 Years of Asian Films
variety.comPatrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The Far East Film Festival in Udine, Italy, is back in full force in 2023, celebrating its 25th anniversary edition from April 21–29.
A key component of the celebrations will be a focus on the Asian films of the 1980s. “We have never programmed these films, nor put together this kind of program before,” says Thomas Bertacche, the FEFF’s co-head. “But these were the films and directors that inspired us to shape Udine into the festival that it is today.” Pitching the historical lineup as “hidden treasures,” the selection is expected to include early works by Japan’s Kurosawa Kiyoshi, Thailand’s Nonzee Nimibutr and South Korea’s Jan Sung-woo.
Roger Garcia, former executive director of the Hong Kong International Film Festival, is set to curate a section on Leung Po-chi, the 83-year-old British-Hong Kong director who made the leap from commercials to TV and into film.
Leung was at the forefront of Hong Kong cinema’s “golden era” making diverse films, including 1984’s “Banana Cop” and Chow Yun-fat-starrer “Hong Kong 1941.” Most of the rest of the festival lineup has yet to be announced, though organizers have teased the selection of “The Sales Girl,” a Mongolian comedy by Sengedorj Janchivdorj in which a woman stands in for her injured friend and finds herself working in a shop selling sex toys. “While seeming on the surface to examine the private kinks and vices of Ulan Bator, it actually follows [the woman’s] progressive emancipation from her ambitious family.
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