Teen and coming-of-age films produced in Asia are the focus of a special section at this year’s Busan International Film Festival, which celebrates its 29th edition in October.
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With ten titles, the section includes a mix of notable recent productions, such as the Malaysian body horror and self-discovery title “Tiger Stripes”, and two world premieres.
In addition to “Tiger Stripes,” which won the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2023 and was selected as Malaysia’s Oscar nominee only to be dropped by local censors, the selection includes: “City of Wind,” winner of the Orizzonti Award for best actor at Venice last year; Okuyama Hiroshi’s “My Sunshine,” from this year’s Un Certain Regard section at Cannes; Sora Neo’s “Happyend,” which plays at Venice next month; Shuchi Talati’s “Girls Will Be Girls,” winner of the Audience Award at Sundance in January; and “Fishbone,” which won a screenplay award at the Shanghai International Film Festival in June.
The two premieres are “The Uniform”, a story about students who share the same school desk, one during the day and the other at night, by Taiwanese Chuang Ching-shen, and “Water Can Go Anywhere”, a story about young people who move to a big city in search of work, directed by Chinese Fang Liang.
This year’s “Special Program in Focus” was inspired by the fact that many exceptional coming-of-age films for teenagers have been produced in Asia recently, festival organizers explained. “Taiwan and Japan have traditionally produced excellent coming-of-age films, such as Edward Yang’s “A Brighter Summer Day” (1991), Hou Hsiao Hsien’s “The Time to Live and the Time to Die” (1985), Kore-eda Hirokazu’s “Nobody Knows” (2004), Yamashita Nobuhiro’s “Linda Linda Linda” (2005), Iwai Shunji’s “All About Lily Chou-Chou” (2001) and Kitano Takeshi’s “Kids Return” (1996). But this expertise is spreading to other Asian countries as well.
“Following the success of Korean films such as ‘House of Hummingbird’ (2018), ‘The World of Us’ (2016) and ‘Moving On’ (2019), we are currently witnessing a rapid rise in teen stories from various Asian countries, such as ‘Tiger Stripes’ from Malaysia, ‘City of Wind’ from Mongolia and ‘Girls Will Be Girls’ (2024) from India.
“These stories capture audiences’ hearts by offering a candid look at the hidden truths of the world through the eyes of teenagers, uncovering the love and sexuality of teenage life – sometimes brash, sometimes nostalgic, but still endearing to viewers of all ages.
The festival will take place from October 2nd to 11th. The full selection will be announced on September 3rd.
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