2016 Festival Lineup
Opening Film
ALI AND NINO - UK
Synopsis: In the city of Baku, Azerbaijan, on the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution, a young Muslim Prince falls in love with a Georgian Princess. As the First World War starts to encroach on their lives, they find themselves on a quest to find truth and love in a world full of conflict and contradictory beliefs.
AWFF Opening Film Screening
Closing Film
OPERATION CHROMITE - SOUTH KOREA
Official Golden Globe Submission for Best Foreign Language Film Award
Synopsis: South Korean Navy Special Forces, Captain Jang Hak-soo and 7 members of the KLO (Korean Liasion Office) unit disguise themselves as a North Korean inspection unit and infiltrate the North Korean army command center in Inchon. Their mission directives from Gen. MacArthur are: 1. Recon enemy forces in Inchon and secure the mine chart, 2. Kidnap ‘Ryu Jang-choon,’ the second highest ranking officer in the North Korean command center, to acquire intel on the naval mine location and 3. On D-Day, light the Palmido light house as a signal to the main UN forces. Only when the light house is lit will General MacArthur initiate the battle to take back Inchon. With everything they got, Jang and the KLO unit charge the lighthouse…
Official Selection
3000 NIGHTS - JORDAN
Official Oscars Submission for Foreign Language Film Award
Synopsis: After being falsely accused, young newlywed Palestinian schoolteacher Layal is arrested and sentenced to 8 years in prison. She's transferred to a high-security Israeli women's prison where she encounters a terrifying world in which Palestinian political prisoners are incarcerated with Israeli criminal inmates. When she discovers she is pregnant, the prison director pressures her to abort the baby and spy on the Palestinian inmates. However, resilient and still in chains, she gives birth to a baby boy. Through her struggle to raise her son behind bars, and her relationship with the other prisoners, she manages to find a sense of hope and a meaning to her life. Prison conditions deteriorate and the Palestinian prisoners decide to strike. The prison director warns her against joining the rebellion and threatens to take her son away. In a moment of truth, Layal is forced to make a choice that will forever change her life.
THE AGE OF SHADOWS - SOUTH KOREA
Official Oscars Submission for Foreign Language Film Award
Synopsis:Set in the late 1920s, The Age of Shadows follows the cat-and-mouse game that unfolds between a group of resistance fighters trying to bring in explosives from Shanghai to destroy key Japanese facilities in Seoul, and Japanese agents trying to stop them. A talented Korean-born Japanese police officer, who was previously in the independence movement himself, is thrown into a dilemma between the demands of his reality and the instinct to support a greater cause.
AMANAT - KAZAKHSTAN
Official Oscars Submission for Foreign Language Film Award
Synopsis: The film narrates three stories of the brutal Russian occupation of Kazakhstan, starting from the colonial period (1837-1847), moving on to Stalin’s totalitarian system (1917-1952), and finally to Soviet Stalin and Khrushev period (1960-1980). Each story depicting attempts by the Russian Empire to erase the Kazakh traditions, culture and history. This story is revealed through a young Kazakh journalist Ramazan Duman. For the first time in history, Kazakh cinematographers dared to address a topic, which had been long under the seal of taboo, and consequently provoked a strong reaction of the general public and an unprecedented box office success.
THE BLACK HEN - NEPAL
Official Oscars Submission for Foreign Language Film Award
Synopsis: In the year 2001, a temporary ceasefire brings a much-needed break to a small war-torn village in Northern Nepal, bringing much joy among the residents. Prakash and Kiran, two young close friends, are also starting to feel the change in the air. Though they are divided by caste and social creed, they remain inseparable, and start raising a hen given to Prakash by his sister, with hopes to save money by selling her eggs. However, the hen goes missing. To find it, they embark on a journey, innocently unaware of the tyranny brought by the fragile ceasefire.
COLD OF KALANDAR - TURKEY
Official Oscars Submission for Foreign Language Film Award
Synopsis: Mehmet is a man living with his family in a mountain village in the Black Sea region. He earns his life breeding a few animals, while passionately looking for a mineral reserve on the mountains, but his pursuit is seen useless by his family. Devastated by vain efforts, his hope is renewed with a competition. Mehmet will attend the bull fight held in Artvin, but he returns from Artvin completely lost, once again. This simple story pictures the naive portrait of a touching life, a life struggle in hardship and the relationship between nature, animals and human beings.
EL CLÁSICO - IRAQ
Official Oscars Submission for Foreign Language Film Award
Synopsis: El Clásico is the story of Alan, who is willing to sacrifice everything for the love of his life, Gona. It takes him and his brother Shirwan on a road trip from a small village in Iraq to the football stadium of Real Madrid in Spain. The brothers Alan and Shirwan are little people, living in a town in Kurdish, Iraq. Alan wants to marry his girlfriend Gona, but when her father Jalal finds out about it, he forbids her from marrying a little person and gets the brothers evicted from their home. Alan knows that Gona´s father, who is a shoemaker, is also a big Real Madrid-fan. He has made some special shoes that he dreams of giving to Cristiano Ronaldo. Alan steals the shoes thinking that if he can get them to Ronaldo in Madrid, Jalal will let him marry Gona. Therefore the brothers set out on a road trip to Spain. Their perilous journey through modern day Iraq puts them up against bureaucracy, smugglers and terrorists. Will he manage to give the shoes to Cristiano Ronaldo and will this win him the love of his life?
A FATHER'S WILL - KYRGYZSTAN
Official Oscars Submission for Foreign Language Film Award
Synopsis: After living as an immigrant in the USA for 15 years, Azat flies to Kyrgyzstan to his family village. His father, Murat, died in the USA a year ago. It was his dying wish to pay back the money he owed to the villagers. Azat discovers the family home derelict. Choro, the younger brother of Murat, and their relations left a long time ago. Despite most villagers not liking him, Azat repairs the family home and repays the money his father owed. One day, Choro, who was imprisoned because of Murat, arrives and the most important question about Murat's will is decided.
THE IDOL - PALESTINE
Official Oscars Submission for Foreign Language Film Award
Synopsis: Gaza. Synonymous to so many with conflict, destruction and despair but to Mohammed Assaf, and his sister Nour, Gaza is their home and their playground. It’s where they, along with their best friends Ahmad and Omar, play music, football and dare to dream big. Their band might play on second hand, beaten up instruments but their ambitions are sky-high. For Mohammed and Nour, nothing less than playing the world famous Cairo Opera Hall will do. It might take them a lifetime to get there but, as Mohammed will find out, some dreams are worth living for.
INTERROGATION - INDIA
Official Oscars Submission for Foreign Language Film Award
Synopsis: A group of immigrants (Pandi, Murugan, Afsal and Kumar) are detained by the local state police, tortured and forced to admit to a crime they have no knowledge of. When all hope seems to be lost, a policeman from their hometown speaks on their behalf at the court hearing, setting them free. The policeman asks for a return favour and the boys oblige, oblivious to the ill fate that awaits them. As they unwittingly bear witness to political treason, the system seeks to silence them, at any cost. But Pandi is determined to be heard.
KARMA - THAILAND
Official Oscars Submission for Foreign Language Film Award
Synopsis: Uncontrollable infatuation leads to darkness over oneself. “Sun” is a 19-year-old boy who always thinks about himself and doesn’t care what other people think. He lives life recklessly until his father forces him to get ordained. Faithless and unaccepting of his own mistakes, Sun still lives his life the old way even though he is now wearing the monk’s yellow robes. That includes having an affair with “Fai” a local girl who longs for love. Both of them don’t think they are doing anything wrong. The sinful behavior eventually leads Sun to be involved with horrific secrets hidden inside the temple, including the secret of the affair between a monk and a woman, and the confrontation with a hungry demon that follows him to ask for merit and life. All the dark Everything seems to be connected to one another, bound by the same thing - karma. Finally, the mistakes he is running away from starts catching up to him. The only way to end it is to pay for the sins he has committed.
MAH E MIR - PAKISTAN
Official Oscars Submission for Foreign Language Film Award
Synopsis: Set in contemporary times a young anarchist poet while denouncing the tradition, goes through the sufferings of love, separation and poverty which drives him to madness in which he discovers the 18th century ‘god of poetry’ Meer Taqi Meer. In his poetic journey he embodies the intense love, the passion, and the creative madness of the poet.
REDHA - MALAYSIA
Official Oscars Submission for Foreign Language Film Award
Synopsis: Upon the discovery that their only son Danial is autistic, Alina and Razlan's world crumbles as they struggle to confront the harsh realities of raising a child disabled by a condition they hardly knew about. Razlan's inability to accept the truth causes friction within the family, but Alina's perseverance and maternal instinct help wade through the difficult times raising Danial. With her sister and a close friend by her side, they may have found a way to improve Danial's quality of life until a tragic accident causes the family to rethink its strategy.
THE STUDENT - RUSSIA
Official Golden Globe Submission for Best Foreign Language Film Award
Synopsis: Contemporary Russia. A high school student becomes convinced that the world has been lost to evil, and begins to challenge the morals and beliefs of the adults around him.
THE UNNAMED - BANGLADESH
Official Oscars Submission for Foreign Language Film Award
Synopsis: When someone else’s corpse is found inside the coffin of an expat worker in the Middle East, a local police officer experiences an identity crisis. The central character, a poor farmer from a remote Bangladeshi village, faces challenges in every step throughout the story and must ultimately find a way to overcome his problems. Sometimes these problems are from bureaucracy, sometimes from his peers or even from his own traditional mindset. Despite everything that happens, the message of global humanity wins at the end.
VERY BIG SHOT - LEBANON
Official Oscars Submission for Foreign Language Film Award
Synopsis: Brothers Ziad and Joe run a small but lucrative drug-dealing business out of their takeout pizzeria in one of Beirut's working-class districts. With their youngest brother Jad about to be released from prison — where he was serving a sentence for a crime that Ziad had committed — Ziad and Joe plan to go straight by using their coke-peddling profits to open a restaurant. But Ziad's supplier, a powerful drug lord who is none too keen to see his dealers retire, convinces the brothers to take on one last job: smuggling a million-dollar shipment of locally manufactured amphetamine to Syria, where the drug is wildly popular with militia fighters. Smelling a trap, Ziad, Joe, and Jad hatch a plan to divert the shipment to Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan, where they have a secure connection. By chance, they learn that cans of exposed film reels are spared the obligatory X-ray scanning at the Beirut airport, as the radiation can wipe the footage. Overnight, the three brothers become the producers of a feature film directed by Charbel, a talentless filmmaker and frequent customer whose tab at the pizzeria has vastly exceeded his means. As the shipping date approaches, the boys race to finalize the details of their very big plan while warding off the suspicions of their vengeful boss.
YELLOW FLOWERS on the GREEN GRASS -VIETNAM
Official Oscars Submission for Foreign Language Film Award
Synopsis: Tuong (Trong Khang), may look may look like your typical eight year old adorable country bumpkin, but he has a secret: he actually is friends with a princess. Although everyone in his family and village may not believe him; Tuong knows that the princess exists and she will make him her prince. His pureness of the heart and beliefs give him the confident nature to not back down from any challenge or obstacle that he faces. In contrast, Thieu (Tinh Vinh), Tuong’s slightly older brother, is very studious but also very timid in nature. His shy personality makes him an easy target for Son (Cong Huan), the school bully. Set in Vietnam in 1989, this coming of age story explores the relationship between these two brothers as they seek to uncover the truth about the myth of the princess of the enchanted forest and the man-eating white tiger that guards her. Victor Vu, a seasoned filmmaker who started his filmmaking career at Viet Film Fest, has made a cinematic marvel in Yellow Flowers on the Green Grass. He has created a glimpse into the beauty and serene environment of Vietnam through this film that not only captures the audience’s hearts right away, but also leaves them with warm feeling of joy at the end.
Special Screening
ASURA: THE CITY OF MADNESS - SOUTH KOREA
Synopsis: Detective Han, who for years has been secretly doing dirty work for the corrupt mayor Park Sungbae, is now pressured by a ruthless prosecutor Kim Cha-in to cooperate in an investigation against the mayor. Feeling trapped, Han persuades his young partner Sunmo to take over his work for the mayor, but things start to get tangled in unpredictable ways. As things are getting worse, only the most evil survives in this dog-eat-dog world.
Genre: Action | Crime | Drama
APPRENTICE - SINGAPORE
Official Oscars Submission for Foreign Language Film Award
Synopsis: Aiman is a 28-year-old Malay correctional o cer who is re- cently transferred to the territory’s top prison. He lives with his older sister Suhaila in a modest housing estate. At his new workplace, Aiman begins to take an interest in a 65-year-old sergeant named Rahim. Soon, it is revealed that the charis- matic Rahim is actually the long-serving chief executioner of the prison. Rahim also takes notice of the principled and diligent Aiman. When Rahim’s assistant suddenly quits, he asks Aiman to become his apprentice. Aiman tells Suhaila of his new job position, but Suhaila becomes upset, as their father was actually executed by Rahim. Aiman knew this all along. Can Aiman overcome his conscience and a haunted past to possibly take over as the next chief executioner?
DEER FLOWER - SOUTH KOREA
Official Oscars Submission for Foreign Language Film Award
Synopsis: In the summer of 1992, Dujung, an elementary student, goes to a farm in the suburbs with his parents. While his parents believe the expensive and rare specialty from the farm will strengthen their son’s body, Dujung suffers side effects.
EARTHQUAKE - ARMENIA
Official Golden Globe Submission for Best Foreign Language Film Award
Synopsis: Earthquake tells the story of the massive quake that destroyed more than 300 communities and killed 25,000 people. Focused around the story of two young men, Andrey and Robert , whose fates are already intertwined by an earlier tragedy. The film brings them together in the same rescue squad as they struggle to cope with a disaster that eclipses their own personal stories.A dramatized recreation of one of the region's most devastating natural disasters in 1988,Earthquake was chosen as Armenia's submission for best foreign-language film Oscar consideration.as to sell off his cyclo-trisaw and blood, to earn money in return for drugs for his child. How does this man struggle to keep his children alive?
THE FAITH - MONGOLIA
Synopsis: Itgel, an ordinary public servant, gets a sudden boost in his career and joins the “minister’s team,” where his signature decides many people’s lives. Despite his influential new post, he fails to buttress his friend Akhbayar’s most important project. While anguishing over it, he learns that he has a terminal illness. What would you do if you were going to die tomorrow? Can you let your friend’s life crumble, leave your parents and loved one behind without disclosing the truth to them? Mongolia tops the world corruption index. The film reveals how young public officials fall victim to the current status quo of endless corruption and reminds the viewer of the fact that one is remembered for what he/she were and not what he/she had.
Genre: Drama
HALAL LOVE - LEBANON
Synopsis: Four tragicomic interconnected stories about how devoted Muslim men and women are trying to manage their love life and desires without breaking any religious rules.
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
HANG IN THERE, KIDS! - TAIWAN
Official Submission for Best Foreign Language Film - Taiwan
Synopsis: In a secluded indigenous tribe, three children grow up in a remote, mountainous area. They are all very optimistic, energetic and playful, yet troubled by their own family issues. Their handicapped teacher opens an after school program to help them with their schoolwork. The children, deeply touched by her care for the them, want to repay her for her kindness. Upon discovering her beautiful singing voice, they decide to take the tape of her singing to Taipei....How will this trip change their lives forever?
LEOPARD DO NOT BITE - SRI LANKA
Synopsis: Gomari, a village lass slips out of a sermon at the temple and into the thick jungle to frolic with her lover but they both fall prey to a leopard. People in the nearby village listen to the monk for advice. All except the hunter who lives in the jungle. He provides the village with meat but he eats it not. It is the month of Vesak and the people from the nearby village plan to observe the precepts on Vesak full moon day. The hunter knows what happened to Gomari and entreats the Monk to cancel his scheduled program but the monk refuses and leads such matters to fate. The hunter, who never kills except as food for people, is forced to kill the leopard. When the monk and the hunter go into the jungle the next day, all they see are the rotting corpses of Gomari and the monk.
Genre: Drama
THE MOTHER - MONGOLIA
Synopsis: In 1984, Khand, a single mother aged 69, lives in Uws province while her only son has gone to serve the Republic Army. An unfortunate event occurs and her son is convicted for murder. Khand travel miles, dedicates every breath and fights with everything she has for her only child.
Genre: Drama
MY MURDERER - RUSSIA
Official Golden Globe Submission for Best Foreign Language Film Award
Synopsis: A young detective has little time to reveal a seemingly simple murder case. The investigation unravels into a dangerous journey into the world of illegal mining and trafficking of gold-- a world ruled by money and life has little value. Will the case remain as clear as it seemed at first sight? Will your experience be enough, and old friends stay faithful or will love become a reliable refuge? There is no black and white in this film. There are only circumstances that change every minute.
NAGASAKI: MEMORIES OF MY SON - JAPAN
Synopsis: Set in post-World War II Japan, midwife Nobuko is resolved to move on as she stands at the grave of her son Koji who died, alongside thousands of others, when the Americans dropped an atomic bomb on the civilians in the southern city of Nagasaki. However, upon returning home she is visited by an apparition. which continues to return in order to commiserate and reminisce with the woman about the past, family, affection and war.
Genre: Drama
PALI ROAD - USA
Synopsis: PALI ROAD is a mesmerizing and chilling journey into the mystery of the human psyche and the power of love. Lily (Chen), a young doctor, wakes up from a car accident to discover she is now married to her boyfriend’s affluent rival, Dr. Mitch Kane (Kang), has a six-year-old-son, and an established life she has no recollection of. Everyone around her, including her parents, deny that her boyfriend, Neal (Rathbone), ever existed, sending her on a desperate search for the truth. Determined to reclaim a life everyone insists is nothing more than an illusion, Lily eventually begins to doubt her own sanity. Struggling to overcome her seemingly hopeless situation, Lily endures a series of unexplainable and haunting incidents while bravely making her way to an ultimate mind-bending truth about the power of true love.
Genre: Mystery, Drama
PARADISE - RUSSIA
Official Oscars Submission for Foreign Language Film Award
Synopsis: Paradise, tells the story of three individuals and their fateful decisions forced by a totality of conviction. While listening to their recounts, we are taken back to the nal days of World War II and the days their destiny crossed paths: Olga (Julia Vysotskaya), a beautiful aristocratic Russian émigré and member of the French resistance, Jules (Philippe Duquesne), a corrupt French police collaborator and Helmut (Christian Clauss), a naïve but high-ranking German SS officer.
RED - RUSSIAN
Synopsis: “Krasny” - is a period ‘red western’ set in the south of post revolutionary Russia. The lm tells a story about a noble woman, red commissar and a Cossack whose paths intertwine in a most unexpected way.
Genre: Western
ROAD TO MOTHER - KAZAKHSTAN
Official Golden Globe Submission for Best Foreign Language Film Award
Synopsis: Story about the power of maternal love, which helped the protagonist survive and overcome the harsh experiences on the way home. The main events unfold against a difficult time for the Kazakh people: collectivization, famine, war and post-war years
THE MAP AGAINST THE WORLD - SOUTH KOREA
Synopsis: At a time when maps weren't readily accessible for the public, 'Gosanja KIM Jeong-ho' sets out to walk across the Korean peninsula to make the Daedongyeojido - the Great Map of the East Land, with hopes of providing an accurate and accessible map for the ordinary people. He has all but forgotten about his daughter KIM Sunsil, who grew to be 16 years old in his absence, as he focuses on completing his map. People say he is crazy, but driven by his goal, KIM Jeong-ho endeavors to complete the template for woodblock printing of the map. However, Daewongun, the King Father seeks to take KIM Jeong-ho's map to gain the upper hand in his power struggle with the House of Kim of Andong.
Genre: Epic/ Historical
THE WORLD OF US - SOUTH KOREA
Synopsis: At an age when perhaps friends mean more than moms, 10 year-old Sun is an outcast at school. During summer vacation, she meets Jia, who is new to town. As Sun shows Jia around the neighborhood and they play at each other's houses and share secrets, they become best friends. However when the new semester starts, Jia notices a strange vibe between Sun and the other kids. Jia tries to get into the cool kids group and starts to distance herself from Sun. Inside the perhaps more complex and delicate world of children than adults, the two girls end up hurting and getting hurt by each other.
Genre: Drama
TYRUS - USA
Synopsis: Set against a backdrop of immigration, poverty, and racial prejudice, TYRUS is the true story of 105 - year - old pioneering Chinese American artist Tyrus Wong, revealed through the lens of filmmaker Pamela Tom. Reaching back to 1919, nine-year-old Tyrus and his father left their village and family in China. Tyrusʼ incredible journey takes him from the Angel Island Immigration Station in San Francisco where he is detained and interrogated, to earning a scholarship to Otis Art Institute. During his 85-year career as a fine and commercial artist, Tyrus crosses paths with the likes of Picasso and Matisse, Walt Disney and Warner Bros. along the way. Although his design work was crucial to the animated classic Bambi and over 100 live-action movies including The Music Man, Rebel Without a Cause and The Wild Bunch, the name Tyrus Wong remains largely unknown–until now. Tyrusʼ life weaves an extraordinary thread in the tapestry of the American experience.
Genre: Documentary | Biography
ZOOLOGY - RUSSIA
Synopsis: Middle-aged zoo worker Natasha still lives with her mother in a small coastal town. As she struggles for independence, she has to endure the absurd reality of her life filled with gossip spread by the women around her. She is stuck and it seems that life has no surprises for her until one day... she grows a tail. Embarrassed at first, Natasha decides to go further with the transformation and use it as an opportunity to redefine herself as a person and as a woman. With the new “accessory” she gets access to the life that she has never experienced before - she starts a relationship with a man, who finds her attractive, she goes out and allows herself to be foolish for the first time in her life. But her second puberty eventually comes to an end and Natasha has to make a choice between reality and illusion.
Genre: Drama
XUAN ZANG - CHINA
Official Oscars Submission for Foreign Language Film Award
Synopsis: During the Tang Dynasty's during the era of "Zhen Guan" (era name during rule of Emperor Taizong), the young Xuan Zang monk, in his quest for the knowledge in Buddhism, embarked on a journey to India, that is fraught with perils and dangers, natural disasters, and sees the sufferings of the common people. Soldiers gets in his way, his disciples betrays him, he struggles through deserts, runs short of food and water, all in the quest for Buddha's teachings. He finally arrives in India, and studies Buddhism in earnest. By the time he returns to China, he is already 50 years old.