Coinciding with the celebration of the 20th anniversary of Casa Asia, the Asian Film Festival Barcelona | AFFBCN 2021 returns to the city. The ninth edition of the contest will be held from October 27 to November 7 with a programme that this year will be mostly screened offline and the rest will be online.
The venues for this edition of the Festival are CaixaForum, Cinemes Girona, Instituto Francés and Filmoteca de Catalunya, while the Filmin cinema platform will host the online programme. In total, the AFFBCN 2021 will screen more than a hundred films, as in previous editions.
It is an inclusive cinema that starts from diversity and multiculturalism and affects the most recent social, identity and political changes on the vast Asian map. This is the focus of this ninth edition, which reaffirms Casa Asia’s commitment for Barcelona to have a unique festival specialized in the best current filmography on the continent.
The AFFBCN intends, once again, to bring to the national public productions of different cultures and ethnic groups that arrive from Central Asia, Southeast Asia and Asia-Pacific, allowing the viewer to undertake a trip from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, to Iran, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, China, paying special attention to the cinematographies from Hong Kong and Macao, Mongolia, Korea, Japan, Singapore, Thailand, Burma, Cambodia, Malaysia, Philippines, Laos, Indonesia and Vietnam, and reaching Australia and New Zealand.
Among the highlights of this year, it is worth mentioning the inaugural film Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (2021) by Japanese filmmaker Ryusuke Hamaguchi. Drive my Car (2021) by the same director will also be screened at the festival. It won the Best Screenplay Award at the last Cannes Film Festival. Both films will soon be released in Spain after having been awarded at several festivals.
Regarding the Festival’s programme, we highlight the 14 Iranian films produced in 2020 and 2021; the 15 titles from India in 2020 and 2021, with a single exception of 2019. It is also worth mentioning the participation of countries such as Japan with ten titles, China and Australia, with seven titles, and Korea and the Philippines with six. For its director, Menene Gras Balaguer, “it is a plural and representative cinema of the geographical, political, economic and cultural diversity of an unequal continent”.
The AFFBCN 2021 programme will continue to be divided in the following sections: Official, Official Panorama, Discoveries, Netpac and Special, all in competition. In addition, one of the novelties of this year are the 10 titles in competition, added to the Hong Kong New Talents programme that has been made possible thanks to the Hong Kong International Film Festival and the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in Brussels.
On the other hand, the programme is expanded with the OFF-Festival, which is proposed as an introduction and an extension of the AFFBCN. This extension consists of three series: Asian Cinema outside Barcelona, Asian Cinema at Girona Cinemas (Retrospectives and Monographs) on a weekly basis, Asian Cinema at Girona Cinemas (school programming) and Asia Cinemas at BETEVÉ, which are held a few days before the opening of the contest.
The festival will also integrate into its programme the Satyajit Ray Retrospective (Calcutta, India, 1921), which will be held as every year in collaboration with the Filmoteca de Catalunya. It will include 16 titles and it will be one of the largest monographs that has ever been screened in Spain.
The AFFBCN 2021 has the support of the Institut de Cultura de les Empreses Culturals del Department de Cultura de la Generalitat de Catalunya, the Institut de Cultura of Barcelona City Council, Catalunya Film Festivals, EFE Agency and Betevé, among others.
9th Asian Film Festival Barcelona | AFFBCN 2021
www.asianfilmfestival.barcelona
Dates: from 27 October to 7 November
Venue: CaixaForum, Cinemes Girona, Instituto Francés and Filmin (online)
Press Contact: Estela Morón | 630 431 664 | [email protected]
Communication Director: Josep Casaus [email protected]
