Don't Miss these Asian Films at the Seattle Int'l Film Festival

The full lineup for the 51st Seattle International Film Festival is live and individual tickets are on sale now.
Fans of Asian cinema will not be disappointed. Check out these 2025 selections:

CHINA

1. The Botanist/Zhi Wu Xue Jia (dir. Jing Yi)

• Fantastical, lushly-framed debut drama feature film set in rural northwestern China.
• In this film, a lonely 13-year-old Kazakh boy in touch with the wonders of nature befriends a local Han girl, only for the call of the modern outside world to come calling. In his directorial debut, Jing Yi delivers an intimate exploration of youth, nature, and first love, blending magical realism with a grounded portrayal of rural life.
• Born in Xinjiang, China in 1994, Jing Yi is a graduate of the Beijing Film Academy. He has made several short films, often exploring the inner worlds of minority groups in contemporary China. THE BOTANIST (2025), celebrated its world premiere in Generation Kplus at Berlinale and won The Grand Prix Of The International Jury For The Best Film. While in development, it was selected for the 2023 Asian Project Market where it won the New Horse Award.
• SCREENINGS: Friday, May 23 (SIFF Cinema Downtown) & Saturday, May 24 (Shoreline Community College)

SOUTH KOREA

1. By the Stream/Suyoocheon (dir. Hong Sang-soo)

• Feature film that is a meditative, lo-fi rumination on the creation of art.
• In this film, a university lecturer calls upon her retired uncle to write and direct a play for her students after their previous hire left under a cloud of scandal. Not unfamiliar to scandals of his own, his presence coaxes both self-reflection and conversation for all involved, on what kind of people they want to be, and what they are willing to move past.
• The film previously won Best Performance at the Locarno Film Festival 2024 and stars Kim Minhee, Kwon Haehyo, and Cho Yunhee. Hong Sang-soo's filmography includes The Woman Who Ran (2020), Right Now, Wrong Then (2015), Nobody's Daughter Haewon (2013), Our Sunhi (2013), The Day He Arrives (2011), Night and Day (2008).
• SCREENINGS: Tuesday, May 20 (SIFF Cinema Uptown) & Wednesday, May 21 (SIFF Cinema Uptown)

JAPAN

1. Cloud (dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

• Legendary filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Pulse, Cure, Tokyo Sonata) ramps up the thrills in this genre-bending potboiler about a craven opportunist who finds success as an internet reseller, only for revenge-seeking vigilantes to come calling.
• SCREENINGS: Monday, May 19 (SIFF Cinema Uptown) & Sunday, May 25 (SIFF Cinema Uptown)

2. Happyend (dir. Neo Sora)

• In an earthquake-rattled near-future Tokyo, a multiethnic band of politically aware teens protest their high school’s draconian and demerit-based new surveillance system in the latest from SIFF alum Neo Sora (2023’s Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus).
• SCREENINGS: Thursday, May 22 (AMC Pacific Place) & Friday, May 23 (AMC Pacific Place)

HONG KONG

1. Fly Me to the Moon/但願人長久 (dir. Sasha Chuk)

• In Sasha Chuk’s autobiographical coming-of-age drama, young Yuen struggles to adapt to her new surroundings and social class when she and her mother emigrate from Mainland China to 1990s Hong Kong to reunite with the family patriarch.
• SCREENINGS: Monday, May 19 (Shoreline Community College), Wednesday, May 21 (SIFF Cinema Uptown), & Monday, May 26 - Sunday, June 1 (SIFF Streaming)

2. Little Red Sweet/紅豆 (dir. Vincent Chow)

• In a rapidly changing Kowloon City, one Hong Kong family struggles to keep their traditional dessert shop open in the face of illness, generational desires, and gentrification in Vincent Chow Wing’s wistful, nostalgic family drama.
• SCREENINGS: Wednesday, May 21 (AMC Pacific Place) & Sunday, May 25 (Shoreline Community College)

3. Luz (dir. Flora Lau)

• A Chinese ex-con seeks to rekindle a relationship with his estranged cam girl daughter, while a gallerist connects with her ailing French stepmother (Huppert), in this dual narrative about finding familial intimacy in a virtual reality world.
• SCREENINGS: Tuesday, May 20 (SIFF Cinema Uptown) & Thursday, May 22 (AMC Pacific Place)

CAMBODIA

1. Meeting with Pol Pot/Rendez-Vous avec Pol Pot (dir. Rathy Panh)

• A historical drama feature directed by Oscar®-nominated filmmaker Rithy Panh (2013’s The Missing Picture) which unfolds like a horror film, as three French journalists in 1978 Cambodia learn the terrible truth about the Khmer Rouge regime.
• This film is a French production, with notable French actors, directed by a Cambodian documentarian, and is based on a book by Elizabeth Becker, a Seattle writer who attended the University of Washington and interviewed Pol Pot and reported on Cambodia during the regime for the Washington Post.
• The director, who escaped the Khmer Rouge and lived in refugee camps until he made his way to Paris, where he studied film, has made dozens of documentaries telling the stories of Cambodian people’s lives under the severely punitive Khmer Rouge regime. Panh appears in this film in a cameo as the heinous Pol Pot in the scene of the French journalists’ long-sought-after meeting with the supreme leader. In recent times, he has established a film and photography center in Cambodia to preserve the nation’s history.
• SCREENINGS: Sunday, May 18 (SIFF Cinema Uptown) & Tuesday, May 20 (SIFF Cinema Uptown)

MALAYSIA (BASED IN + DIRECTOR FROM MONGOLIA)

1. To Kill a Mongolian Horse (dir. Xiaoxuan Jiang)

• Director Xiaoxuan Jiang, a native of Inner Mongolia who studied film in New York, has created a set of emotional characters in a bleak but beautiful Mongolian setting. Director Jiang’s lovely quiet film features beautiful scenery and effective acting that speaks to the ongoing destruction of native cultures.
• Themes in her previous award-winning short film (Graveyard of Horses, 2022) have included femininity, nature, animals, and mysticism. To Kill a Mongolian Horse, a Malaysian co-production, offers a rare look at Inner Mongolia from an insider’s perspective.
• SCREENINGS: Sunday, May 18 (AMC Pacific Place), Tuesday, May 20 (AMC Pacific Place, & Monday, May 26 - Sunday, June 1 (SIFF Streaming)

INDIA

1. Boong (dir. Lakshmipriya Devi)

• Class-conscious, charming coming-of-age border drama from debut filmmaker Lakshmipriya Devi, which tells the story of nine-year-old schoolboy Boong who hears a rumor that his father has passed, and then he and his best friend Raju make the journey to Moreh to investigate.
- Lakshmipriya Devi has drawn from her experience as a First Assistant Director in landmark Indian productions, including Farhan Akhtar’s LAKSHYA (2004) and Rajkumar Hirani’s PK (2014). BOONG (2024) is her feature debut, which has been selected for TIFF 2024.
• SCREENINGS: Thursday, May 22 (SIFF Cinema Uptown), Sunday, May 25 (AMC Pacific Place), & Monday, May 26 - Sunday, June 1 (SIFF Streaming)
  

View the program online or pick up a copy at a SIFF Cinema venue. See you in the Reel World!