A new edition of the best Asian cinema arrives, AFFBCN 2023 Asian Film Festival Barcelona/AFFBCN, the Asian arthouse film festival, is celebrating its 11th edition and will take place from October 25th to November 5th in various venues across Barcelona. Cinemes Girona, Phenomena, CaixaForum, Filmoteca de Catalunya, Manifesta 15, and Zumzeig will host in-person film screenings, while FILMIN and Betevé will host online sessions.
This competition specialized in Asian cinema remains faithful to its origins. It presents a program that includes a hundred films from more than 20 countries, with the aim of bringing the daily lives of the inhabitants of the Asia-Pacific region closer. Their problems and conflicts, daily experiences and emotions, and the feeling of belonging to a certain territory fill the cinematographic proposal of this edition with content.
This year AFFBCN dedicate one retrospective of renowned Chinese director Wang Chao, which will be in Barcelona coinciding with the screening of the 8 most relevant films of his cinematographic career. Yangzi's Confusion (2023), the debut feature of Chinese filmmaker Li Jue, will be the film in charge of opening the festival in the Phenomena room, and we will have the presence of the director, while the film The Royal Hotel (2023) by Australian Kitty Green will close this 11th edition.
This year the festival is also committed to giving visibility to the work of young filmmakers, as is the case of the inaugural film, or with the open call to new or unknown authors.
The headquarters of the AFFBCN 2023 will continue to be the Cinemas Girona, where most of the programming will be distributed. The Film library of Catalonia will host 3 films (of the 8 that will be screened in total) from the retrospective of Chinese filmmaker Wang Chao, and the rest will be distributed in CaixaForum y Zumzeig. Breakfast Phenomena will host the inaugural film on October 25, with the screening of Yangzi's Confusion (2023)
The Festival distributes its programming in five sections, all of them in competition: Official, Official Panorama, Discoveries, NETPAC, and Special. Each has its own juries made up of directors, film critics, and writers. AFFBCN will award fifteen prizes: for best film, best director and best script for each of the competition sections.
As a novelty, the festival wants to promote the emerging talent with the incorporation of a new call open to new or unknown authors where 10 films of the 100 presented will be screened.
For the director of the AFFBCN 2023 Menene Gras Balaguer “The eleventh edition of the festival arrives this fall with a program that aims to be the most representative possible of recent experimental and independent cinema from the Asian continent, without excluding productions that respond both to the interest of an audience familiar with the corresponding cinematography and those who want to get started in a not-so-new cinema, whose diversity preferably responds to the different narratives it exposes.”
New Image
El AFFBCN presents in this edition a new image, work of the Chinese artist Rong Rong, which closes the stage of posters starring the works of French photographer Pierre Gonnord.
The poster of the AFFBCN 2023 evokes a cinematic sequence that this Chinese artist constructs and then photographs, and which is consistent with the presence of Chinese cinema this year.
The relationship of Casa Asia with Rong Rong he comes from afar since he organized the exhibition project in 2008 in Madrid and Barcelona “The power of ruins” composed of 45 images of the artist.
Chinese cinematography, protagonist
In this AFFBCN 2023 China will have a special role coinciding with the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations Spain – China with around twenty films programmed. with the screening of a selection of films at Cinemes Girona and at the Filmoteca de Catalunya.
In fact, the retrospective will correspond to the Chinese filmmaker Wang Chao, with the screening of a selection of films at Cinemes Girona and at the Filmoteca de Catalunya.
