Udine, the historical capital of the northern Italian region of Friuli, has just under 100,000 inhabitants. 14,000 of these (14%) are foreign nationals, mostly Romanians, Albanians and Ukranians. The Chinese population barely reaches 550 - a small number when compared to the 10,000 in Rome, a city with its own sizeable Chinatown. Udine is also a stronghold of the right-wing, populist federalist party Lega Nord (Northern League). In power in the region since 2018, Lega Nord has often adopted a Eurosceptic stance and is resolutely against immigration.
It is this unlikely setting that hosts one of Europe’s most outward-looking festivals. Far East Film Festival (FEEF) was born in 1999 on the wave of the enthusiasm and success achieved a year earlier with a retrospective devoted entirely to Hong Kong cinema. FEEF is organised by Centro Espressioni Cinematografiche (CEC), a member of Unione Italiana Circoli del Cinema (Italian union of film clubs). Together with the cultural association Cinemazero (based in Pordenone, site of the world’s leading silent cinema festival), in 2008 CEC created Tucker Film, an Italian independent distributor and producer of Asian films. Back in 1999 the idea of an East and Southeast Asian cinema festival in Udine seemed, at best, idealistic. Yet, with its own associated distributor, FEEF has been doing very well, having recently celebrated its 25th anniversary.
Today FEEF is the largest European festival representing new trends in contemporary Asian film production. At a time when European festivals programme nearly exclusively Asian productions facilitated and partly funded (when not wholly shaped) by initiatives like Berlinale Talent or Locarno’s Open Doors, FEEF uniquely prides itself in showcasing movies conceived and produced for the Asian mainstream market.
Each year, during nine days of screenings at the Teatro Nuovo Giovanni da Udine, FEEF thus offers European spectators the opportunity to catch the greatest hits from East and Southeast Asia. It has emerged as the place to be for anyone who cares about ‘actual’ Asian cinema. That is to say, for anyone who cares not only about films made by Asian filmmakers with festival funding to cater primarily to European audiences’ tastes. At FEEF programmers, journalists, scholars and the general public can watch the most popular and anticipated films in and from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Korea, Japan, Mongolia and Cambodia. Only a few of these films will ever be released in cinemas across Europe; usually only those of directors who are already well known in Europe. In addition, FEFF hosts unique retrospectives of remastered, rare classics – programmes that enable film scholars and the public alike to see forgotten gems of East and Southeast Asian cinema.
When I first attended FEFF in 2013, it was still a relatively quiet affair. This has changed. Today booking your place in the 1,200-seat Teatro Nuovo is a small challenge in itself; leave it until the day of the screening and you won’t find a seat. The city has also changed, as have the politics of the Friuli region as a whole. In 2013 centre-right Forza Italia MP Renzo Tondo lost his seat to centre-left Democratic Party candidate Debora Serracchiani. Five years later she was replaced by far-right Lega Nord front-runner Massimiliano Fedriga. On my arrival in Udine I engaged in polite conversation with my taxi driver, a friendly-looking woman in her late 40s. ‘Is Udine a pleasant place to live?’ I ask. ‘Very much so,’ she replied, adding ‘It’s just that … we’ve got them here.’ Having spotted from the car window electoral billboards featuring Giorgia Meloni, I naively assumed my driver was referring to Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy), Meloni’s neo-fascist party. I was quickly put right: ‘They don’t like to work. They are dirty. They come here and choose to sleep in the street.’
But Udine’s residents love FEFF. It brings a lot of business. Restaurants and bars remain open every day, even on Sunday, which in Italy is usually sacrosanct. The city also organises daily ancillary activities based on Oriental themes: from yoga lessons and shiatsu massage to tea ceremonies, workshops on bonsai culture and Japanese bookbinding. Shop windows display the best and worst of Italy’s orientalist imaginary. FEFF attendees are mostly Italians and other Europeans. The only Asians on site are industry professionals and guests. Students are a minority, even if the festival offers concessions and hospitality.
For all that, FEFF 2024 was an invaluable window onto recent trends in East Asian cinema. The largest share of the films featuring this year were Chinese, Hong Kong, Japanese and Korean productions – not a surprise given the weight of these industries in the region. I watched an average of four films a day, from 10am to the little hours. Some of the best revisited controversial moments of national history. 12.12: The Day (Kim Sung-soo, South Korea, 2023) stages the hijacking of democracy at the hand of general Chun Doo-hwan in December 1979, when South Korea appeared to be on the verge of a transformation following the assassination of long-time dictatorial president Park Chung-hee. The film focuses on army chief of staff Lee Tae-shin, in charge of the defence of Seoul, and his efforts to foil Chun’s military coup. Addressed to a generation of Koreans familiar with, but too young to have lived through the difficult years that followed, 12:12: The Day works also for those unfamiliar with Korean history, as a reminder of how easily power is usurped and democracy extinguished.
Of a similar tone but not based on actual events, 13 Bom di Jakarta / 13 Bombs (Angga Dwimas Sasongko, Indonesia, 2023) is a tense actioner centred on a devastating terrorist attack. But what initially appears as a handful of merciless thieves turn out to be highly principled vindicators against the injustices of our cruel and corrupt system - the bombs a desperate attempt to subvert the economic order based on global capital flows in connection with the emergence of cryptocurrencies. Beyond the compelling handling of action sequences, 13 Bombs convincingly blurs the boundaries between right and wrong, leading audiences to reflect on the individual dramas of ordinary folks, innocents robbed by ruthless financial speculation, versus ‘the law’, which protects the rich.
The few horror films in the programme were relegated to very late-night slot. Most of them were strangely very poor when compared to the quality and high production values of the fare screened during daylight hours. But these too also appeared to address undigested facets of their country’s history. In Peg O’ My Heart (Nick Cheung, Hong Kong, 2024) director Cheung plays a taxi driver who perpetually lacks sleep. As does one of his passengers, the psychiatrist Dr Man (Terrance Lau), who has disturbing dreams about his deceased mother that hint at secrets involving the father. Set in contemporary Hong Kong, Peg O’ My Heart features characters for whom acknowledging repressed memories becomes key to solving their tortured, present condition. In The Train of Death (Indonesia, 2024), by prolific maestro of genre cinema Rizal Mantovani, two young sisters, Purnama (Hana Malasan) and Kembang (Zara Leola), board the maiden voyage of a new railway line that will take them to Sangkara Resort, a tourist complex located in the forest. As the journey begins, omens and apparitions emerge: the spirits of the trees felled to open the train’s path hatch their revenge. Natural demons taking vengeance against trespassing humans are a common occurrence in Indonesian horror films. Here, Mantovani reframes the generic trope firmly within an environmentalist key that sees nature rebelling against blind financial exploitation. Other horror films in the programme – Exhuma (Jang Jae-hyun, South Korea, 2024) and Death Whisperer (Taweewat Wantha, Thailand, 2023) –suggested a more obscure and vague sense of malaise, displaced, as in The Train of Death, on women.
At FEFF 2024 women directors were thin on the ground (as in the film industry world-wide) but the few selected were well represented. Voice (Mishima Yukiko, Japan, 2024) is a disappointing new omnibus on the theme of life-long trauma. Scripted and co-produced by Mishima herself and inspired by the director’s own experience of sexual assault as a girl, it mercifully never tipped over into personal confession. Of a completely different ilk is The Yin Yang Master (Sato Shimako, Japan, 2024). Inspired by Yumemakura Baku’s novel series, this big budget fantasy features onmyoji, practitioners of divination, sorcery and exorcism who reached the height of their influence at Japan’s imperial court during Heian Era (794- 1185). An exercise in mindless entertainment, enjoyable if somewhat over-long and sentimental, The Yin Yang Master nevertheless reminded me what a pleasure it is see women at the helm of costly mainstream productions.
Fly Me to the Moon (Sasha Chuk, Hong Kong, 2023) and The Midsummer's Voice (Zhang Yudi, China, 2024), both also directed by women, are more modest but very strong films. The first offers a realistic insight into the life of a young couple having migrated to Hong Kong from mainland China with their two young daughters. Poverty and the pressure to hide their ‘mainlander’ status at school marks the two girls’ childhood. The father, unemployed and drug-addicted, loses their trust, only to regain their love in a final moment of redemption. Fly Me to the Moon is a beautifully shot feature that stirs away from facile pietism to present an intelligent snapshot of a Hong Kong seemingly immune to political changes. The Midsummer's Voice centres on a young boy undergoing rigorous and highly competitive state training to become a Chinese opera singer. But as he finds himself dealing with the first signs of adolescence, his voice also begins to change. Passion, ambition and sexuality, all merge in a compelling coming of age story that resonates with another film at FEFF 2024, Confetti (Fujita Naoya, Japan, 2024) – this one not directed by a woman but a stronger take on the venerable seishun eiga (youth film) genre. Confettti’s protagonist, Yuki (Matsufuji Shion) plays female roles in his father’s traveling taishu engeki (popular theatre) troupe. As this moves from town to town, Yuki constantly changes school. On his arrival at a new school Yuki conceals his profession from his classmates, though not out of shame; he simply knows he will be with them barely a month before moving on. But this time Yuki makes two friends, Ken and Maya. Confetti avoids the sentimentalism typical of the genre and the exoticism of many a film about Beijing Opera. Yuki is cool and capable to deploy his skills to engage in his friends’ favourite idol-pop music. He may even have a crush on Ken, we never quite know. Confetti’s focus is less on challenging heteronormative prejudice than showing the transformative power of theatre and friendship.
The most recurring theme across FEFF 2024’s programme was, along with friendship, food. Food as a terrain where desire manifest itself, where social and political conditions play themselves out, as an act of love or the object of deprivation. In The Goldfinger (Felix Chong, Hong Kong, 2023), one of Hong Kong’s most expensive films to date, the two leads of Infernal Affairs (Andrew Lau Wai-keung and Alan Mak, Hong Kong, 2002), Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Andy Lau play off each other again, this time around with their good-/bad-guy roles switched. Henry Ching (Leung) is based on real-life Carrian Group founder George Tan, who saw his Hong Kong business empire collapse in a corruption scandal. In the film ICAC investigator Lau Kai-yuen (Lau) does his best to investigate. Elaborate meals cooked by Ching in his designer kitchen are a measure of the character – his power, cunning and epicurean ways. In A Normal Family (Hur Jin-ho, South Korea, 2023), two wealthy brothers come to an arrangement to cover-up their children’s senseless killing of a homeless man. The negotiations take place around the table over several strained dinners in Seoul’s most exclusive establishment. In Old Fox (Hsiao Ya-chuan, Taiwan, 2023) Liao Jie, a young boy, spends his time at his single father’s workplace, a restaurant, where the father is a waiter. What customers leave behind is enough to feed boy and father, until Liao Jie meets Old Fox, the restaurant’s powerful owner, who teaches the boy that ruthlessness and winning at all costs are the true paths to success.
It is this unlikely setting that hosts one of Europe’s most outward-looking festivals. Far East Film Festival (FEEF) was born in 1999 on the wave of the enthusiasm and success achieved a year earlier with a retrospective devoted entirely to Hong Kong cinema. FEEF is organised by Centro Espressioni Cinematografiche (CEC), a member of Unione Italiana Circoli del Cinema (Italian union of film clubs). Together with the cultural association Cinemazero (based in Pordenone, site of the world’s leading silent cinema festival), in 2008 CEC created Tucker Film, an Italian independent distributor and producer of Asian films. Back in 1999 the idea of an East and Southeast Asian cinema festival in Udine seemed, at best, idealistic. Yet, with its own associated distributor, FEEF has been doing very well, having recently celebrated its 25th anniversary.
Today FEEF is the largest European festival representing new trends in contemporary Asian film production. At a time when European festivals programme nearly exclusively Asian productions facilitated and partly funded (when not wholly shaped) by initiatives like Berlinale Talent or Locarno’s Open Doors, FEEF uniquely prides itself in showcasing movies conceived and produced for the Asian mainstream market.
Each year, during nine days of screenings at the Teatro Nuovo Giovanni da Udine, FEEF thus offers European spectators the opportunity to catch the greatest hits from East and Southeast Asia. It has emerged as the place to be for anyone who cares about ‘actual’ Asian cinema. That is to say, for anyone who cares not only about films made by Asian filmmakers with festival funding to cater primarily to European audiences’ tastes. At FEEF programmers, journalists, scholars and the general public can watch the most popular and anticipated films in and from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Korea, Japan, Mongolia and Cambodia. Only a few of these films will ever be released in cinemas across Europe; usually only those of directors who are already well known in Europe. In addition, FEFF hosts unique retrospectives of remastered, rare classics – programmes that enable film scholars and the public alike to see forgotten gems of East and Southeast Asian cinema.
When I first attended FEFF in 2013, it was still a relatively quiet affair. This has changed. Today booking your place in the 1,200-seat Teatro Nuovo is a small challenge in itself; leave it until the day of the screening and you won’t find a seat. The city has also changed, as have the politics of the Friuli region as a whole. In 2013 centre-right Forza Italia MP Renzo Tondo lost his seat to centre-left Democratic Party candidate Debora Serracchiani. Five years later she was replaced by far-right Lega Nord front-runner Massimiliano Fedriga. On my arrival in Udine I engaged in polite conversation with my taxi driver, a friendly-looking woman in her late 40s. ‘Is Udine a pleasant place to live?’ I ask. ‘Very much so,’ she replied, adding ‘It’s just that … we’ve got them here.’ Having spotted from the car window electoral billboards featuring Giorgia Meloni, I naively assumed my driver was referring to Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy), Meloni’s neo-fascist party. I was quickly put right: ‘They don’t like to work. They are dirty. They come here and choose to sleep in the street.’
But Udine’s residents love FEFF. It brings a lot of business. Restaurants and bars remain open every day, even on Sunday, which in Italy is usually sacrosanct. The city also organises daily ancillary activities based on Oriental themes: from yoga lessons and shiatsu massage to tea ceremonies, workshops on bonsai culture and Japanese bookbinding. Shop windows display the best and worst of Italy’s orientalist imaginary. FEFF attendees are mostly Italians and other Europeans. The only Asians on site are industry professionals and guests. Students are a minority, even if the festival offers concessions and hospitality.
For all that, FEFF 2024 was an invaluable window onto recent trends in East Asian cinema. The largest share of the films featuring this year were Chinese, Hong Kong, Japanese and Korean productions – not a surprise given the weight of these industries in the region. I watched an average of four films a day, from 10am to the little hours. Some of the best revisited controversial moments of national history. 12.12: The Day (Kim Sung-soo, South Korea, 2023) stages the hijacking of democracy at the hand of general Chun Doo-hwan in December 1979, when South Korea appeared to be on the verge of a transformation following the assassination of long-time dictatorial president Park Chung-hee. The film focuses on army chief of staff Lee Tae-shin, in charge of the defence of Seoul, and his efforts to foil Chun’s military coup. Addressed to a generation of Koreans familiar with, but too young to have lived through the difficult years that followed, 12:12: The Day works also for those unfamiliar with Korean history, as a reminder of how easily power is usurped and democracy extinguished.
Of a similar tone but not based on actual events, 13 Bom di Jakarta / 13 Bombs (Angga Dwimas Sasongko, Indonesia, 2023) is a tense actioner centred on a devastating terrorist attack. But what initially appears as a handful of merciless thieves turn out to be highly principled vindicators against the injustices of our cruel and corrupt system - the bombs a desperate attempt to subvert the economic order based on global capital flows in connection with the emergence of cryptocurrencies. Beyond the compelling handling of action sequences, 13 Bombs convincingly blurs the boundaries between right and wrong, leading audiences to reflect on the individual dramas of ordinary folks, innocents robbed by ruthless financial speculation, versus ‘the law’, which protects the rich.
The few horror films in the programme were relegated to very late-night slot. Most of them were strangely very poor when compared to the quality and high production values of the fare screened during daylight hours. But these too also appeared to address undigested facets of their country’s history. In Peg O’ My Heart (Nick Cheung, Hong Kong, 2024) director Cheung plays a taxi driver who perpetually lacks sleep. As does one of his passengers, the psychiatrist Dr Man (Terrance Lau), who has disturbing dreams about his deceased mother that hint at secrets involving the father. Set in contemporary Hong Kong, Peg O’ My Heart features characters for whom acknowledging repressed memories becomes key to solving their tortured, present condition. In The Train of Death (Indonesia, 2024), by prolific maestro of genre cinema Rizal Mantovani, two young sisters, Purnama (Hana Malasan) and Kembang (Zara Leola), board the maiden voyage of a new railway line that will take them to Sangkara Resort, a tourist complex located in the forest. As the journey begins, omens and apparitions emerge: the spirits of the trees felled to open the train’s path hatch their revenge. Natural demons taking vengeance against trespassing humans are a common occurrence in Indonesian horror films. Here, Mantovani reframes the generic trope firmly within an environmentalist key that sees nature rebelling against blind financial exploitation. Other horror films in the programme – Exhuma (Jang Jae-hyun, South Korea, 2024) and Death Whisperer (Taweewat Wantha, Thailand, 2023) –suggested a more obscure and vague sense of malaise, displaced, as in The Train of Death, on women.
At FEFF 2024 women directors were thin on the ground (as in the film industry world-wide) but the few selected were well represented. Voice (Mishima Yukiko, Japan, 2024) is a disappointing new omnibus on the theme of life-long trauma. Scripted and co-produced by Mishima herself and inspired by the director’s own experience of sexual assault as a girl, it mercifully never tipped over into personal confession. Of a completely different ilk is The Yin Yang Master (Sato Shimako, Japan, 2024). Inspired by Yumemakura Baku’s novel series, this big budget fantasy features onmyoji, practitioners of divination, sorcery and exorcism who reached the height of their influence at Japan’s imperial court during Heian Era (794- 1185). An exercise in mindless entertainment, enjoyable if somewhat over-long and sentimental, The Yin Yang Master nevertheless reminded me what a pleasure it is see women at the helm of costly mainstream productions.
Fly Me to the Moon (Sasha Chuk, Hong Kong, 2023) and The Midsummer's Voice (Zhang Yudi, China, 2024), both also directed by women, are more modest but very strong films. The first offers a realistic insight into the life of a young couple having migrated to Hong Kong from mainland China with their two young daughters. Poverty and the pressure to hide their ‘mainlander’ status at school marks the two girls’ childhood. The father, unemployed and drug-addicted, loses their trust, only to regain their love in a final moment of redemption. Fly Me to the Moon is a beautifully shot feature that stirs away from facile pietism to present an intelligent snapshot of a Hong Kong seemingly immune to political changes. The Midsummer's Voice centres on a young boy undergoing rigorous and highly competitive state training to become a Chinese opera singer. But as he finds himself dealing with the first signs of adolescence, his voice also begins to change. Passion, ambition and sexuality, all merge in a compelling coming of age story that resonates with another film at FEFF 2024, Confetti (Fujita Naoya, Japan, 2024) – this one not directed by a woman but a stronger take on the venerable seishun eiga (youth film) genre. Confettti’s protagonist, Yuki (Matsufuji Shion) plays female roles in his father’s traveling taishu engeki (popular theatre) troupe. As this moves from town to town, Yuki constantly changes school. On his arrival at a new school Yuki conceals his profession from his classmates, though not out of shame; he simply knows he will be with them barely a month before moving on. But this time Yuki makes two friends, Ken and Maya. Confetti avoids the sentimentalism typical of the genre and the exoticism of many a film about Beijing Opera. Yuki is cool and capable to deploy his skills to engage in his friends’ favourite idol-pop music. He may even have a crush on Ken, we never quite know. Confetti’s focus is less on challenging heteronormative prejudice than showing the transformative power of theatre and friendship.
The most recurring theme across FEFF 2024’s programme was, along with friendship, food. Food as a terrain where desire manifest itself, where social and political conditions play themselves out, as an act of love or the object of deprivation. In The Goldfinger (Felix Chong, Hong Kong, 2023), one of Hong Kong’s most expensive films to date, the two leads of Infernal Affairs (Andrew Lau Wai-keung and Alan Mak, Hong Kong, 2002), Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Andy Lau play off each other again, this time around with their good-/bad-guy roles switched. Henry Ching (Leung) is based on real-life Carrian Group founder George Tan, who saw his Hong Kong business empire collapse in a corruption scandal. In the film ICAC investigator Lau Kai-yuen (Lau) does his best to investigate. Elaborate meals cooked by Ching in his designer kitchen are a measure of the character – his power, cunning and epicurean ways. In A Normal Family (Hur Jin-ho, South Korea, 2023), two wealthy brothers come to an arrangement to cover-up their children’s senseless killing of a homeless man. The negotiations take place around the table over several strained dinners in Seoul’s most exclusive establishment. In Old Fox (Hsiao Ya-chuan, Taiwan, 2023) Liao Jie, a young boy, spends his time at his single father’s workplace, a restaurant, where the father is a waiter. What customers leave behind is enough to feed boy and father, until Liao Jie meets Old Fox, the restaurant’s powerful owner, who teaches the boy that ruthlessness and winning at all costs are the true paths to success.
Finally, one of FEFF 2024 best films, Takano Tofu (Mihara Mitsuhiro, Japan, 2023), is all about food: Takano Tatsuo’s (Fuji Tatsuya) tofu is celebrated as the best in Onomichi, Hiroshima Prefecture. Tatsuo runs a shop with his daughter Haru (Aso Kumiko), serving loyal local customers. As the story begins, Haru and Tatsuo work together harmoniously. Through excellent cinematography we are shown the elaborate process required to make deliciously tasty tofu, from the selection of best beans to the precise cutting of large blocks into tofu as we know it. But Haru wants to innovate. Tatsuo, stubborn and set in his ways, is content to keep doing what he has always done. When a doctor tells him that he needs surgery for an arterial blockage and the matter of finding Haru a husband acquires fresh urgency, things start to change. After interviewing prospective grooms, Tatsuo settles on the sophisticated owner of five Italian restaurants, but Haru has other plans. Meanwhile Tatsuo meets Fumie (Nakamura Kumi), an older woman with whom he shares a past trauma: both are survivors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Things, in the end, do change, except Tastuo’s tofu.
Food and its provision, understood as animals reared for human consumption, also plays a role in Beautiful Duckling (Lee Hsing, Taiwan, 1964) and The Woman of Wrath (Tseng Chuang-hsiang, Taiwan, 1984). Both were part of a splendid retrospective of Taiwanese classics screened in glorious, remastered 4K prints. Coincidentally, both films feature ducklings as stand ins for the protagonist: in Beautiful Duckling, Yue, a young woman, and her adoptive father live a poor but happy life raising ducks. In The Woman of Wrath, young, orphaned Lin Shih is married off to Chiang-shui, a butcher and a violently abusive man. Whole sequences of The Woman of Wrath are set in Chiang-shui’s workplace, an abattoir, including the slaughtering of pigs. When Lin Shih finds a brief moment of joy playing with some ducklings bought with her meagre savings, Chiang-shui kills them with his butchering knife. One night while Chiang-shui is fast asleep, Lin Shih grabs the same knife and kills him. Both restorations were a sheer delight to watch – The Woman of Wrath (original title Sha Fu) in particular is a powerful and remarkable film. It betrays none of its age and gives the term ‘slasher’ a whole new, profound meaning – unlike The Guest (Yeon Je-gwang, South Korea, 2023): 77 minutes of condensed blood and violence the only redeeming feature of which may be that slasher films are a rare occurrence in Korean cinema.
Slashing also marked Zhang Yimou’s Under the Light (China, 2023). Shot in 2019, it was finally granted release by the censors but, after so many cuts and, possibly, state-mandated additions, the result is hard to follow. Whole parts of the story seem disconnected. Will this be the ‘new normal’ in Chinese cinema? The question is raised, obliquely, in The Movie Emperor (Ning Hao, China, 2023), a satire in which Andy Lau plays Lau Wai-chi, a Hong Kong film star attempting a come-back with a major director. To prepare for his role as a 1960s peasant farmer, Lau Wai-chi goes to experience rural life in mainland China, where his arrogance leads to a surreal series of farcical incidents. As good a way, perhaps, as any to duck the censors’ axe.