The Asian Film Festival Barcelona | AFFBCN, the Asian auteur film festival, reaches its twelfth edition this year and will be held from October 24 to November 3, 2024. The Festival maintains its hallmarks for another year, and will screen a hundred films representative of the experimental and independent cinema of the new Asian cinema, with the participation of filmographies from twenty countries in Asia and the Pacific.
AFFBCN 2024 will distribute its programming in five sections: Official, Official Panorama, Discoveries, NETPAC and Special, all of them in competition. The Phenomena room will host the inaugural film “Citizen of a Kind” by director Park Young-ju (Korea 2024), while the main bulk of films will be screened at the Cinemes Girona, including the one that will close this competition specialized in Asian cinema: “Time Still Turns the Pages” by director Nick Cheuk (Hong Kong, 2023). On the other hand, the FILMIN Platform and the BETEVÉ television channel will be the online headquarters.
For the director of the AFFBCN, Menene Gras Balaguer, “This year's programming contains numerous surprises from the participating countries that will allow us to update our knowledge of the Asian film industry, subject to permanent change and innovation, and which we will continue to reveal.”
Como new arrivals To add to the programming, this year the Festival incorporates a course dedicated to Asian cinema, a series of round tables, in addition to presentations and discussions with guest directors. And for the second time, a call has been launched aimed at directors, producers and film students, to present feature films and documentaries in the month of March that aspire to be part of the programming.
The AFFBCN 2024 will grant fifteen awards: for the best film, best director and best script for each of the competing sections, which will be awarded by their corresponding juries, made up of directors, film critics and writers.
The Festival has the support of the ICEC (Generalitat de Catalunya), ICUB (Barcelona City Council), HKETO (Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office, Brussels), FICB (Fundació Institut Confuci de Barcelona), Embassy of Australia and Japan Foundation, among others.
Save the Date
Inauguration film:
Citizen of a Kind
Dir. Park Young-ju
Korea, 2024
After losing her laundry to a fire, Duk-hee, a single mother, receives a call from a bank offering her a generous loan which she immediately accepts. But she soon realizes that she has been the victim of a phishing scam. She seeks help from the police, but they tell her that she will not get her money back. In a moment of desperation, Jae-min, the scammer who deceived her, calls her and explains that a criminal organization is holding him prisoner and forcing him to carry out telephone scams from China. After receiving this information, Duk-hee decides to investigate for herself and takes a flight to China with her friends.
At PHENOMENA, Thursday, October 24, at 19 p.m.
Closing movie:
Time Still Turns the Pages
Dir. Nick Cheuk
Hong Kong, 2023
High school teacher Cheng relives his painful childhood memories after discovering an anonymous suicide note from one of his students.
At the CINEMES GIRONA, on Saturday, November 2, at 20 p.m.
