NHK ASIAN FILM FESTIVAL + Sundance Institute/NHK Award

[SYNOPSIS]
People live in fear in Kirkuk, the northern city of Iraq, where terrorism is a common place of life. The Kurds, who lost housing due to the Arabization during the Saddam Hussein years, live temporarily in a huge stadium. Aso, a young pacifistic Kurd, who loves soccer, has a crush on beautiful Helin, but has not been able to confess his feelings for her. Aso decides to plan a friendly soccer match among boys from Kurds, Arabs, Turks, and Assyrians to ease the ethnic tension and also to cheer up his younger brother who lost a foot because of a land mime.
With support from a local TV station, the game has started. The hostile boys slowly begin to understand each other until......

[SYNOPSIS]
They are two naughty boys who have been nicknamed "Liar No. 1" and "Liar No. 2" by elementary school teachers. As the punishment for their mischievousnesses, they are ordered to repair old books in the library. Before they know it, they learn to live in their imaginary worlds of the books. "Hyper Space", a different-dimension world, is where the boys from troubled families wish to go to the most. Once you reach there, after going through the waterslide 100 times, you grow up instantly and never have to come back to this world. This is a story for the children who cannot wait to grow up and also for the adults who miss being children.

[SYNOPSIS]
Two sisters and one brother live in Istanbul. The well-to-do older sister, Nesrin, is troubled over her son whom she is not getting along with. The younger sister, Guzin, worries about the uncertainty of her relationship with her boyfriend. The brother, Mehmet, a self-proclaimed artist, leads a messy life. It's been a while since they moved to the big city, leading separate lives. One day they are told that their mother, who had been living alone in a village on the coast of the Black Sea, is missing. Although she is found in the mountain, she now behaves in an eccentric way. The doctors tell them that their mother suffers from dementia. The siblings are faced with the big challenge as to what to do with their mother. The film asks viewers fundamental questions of life: how to live and how to face death.

[SYNOPSIS]
While serving time, a robbery-murderer with a life sentence is given one day of parole as a model prisoner. Even under surveillance, he can see his son, whom he has not seen for a long time, and his aging mother. Outside the walls, he is bewildered by fresh air and a view of neighborhood which has been changed a lot. When he returns home, he finds his aging demented mother and his son who is taking care of her with devotion. They eat meals in awkward atmosphere. The man remorsefully regrets forgetting even his son's face and birthday. As if to make up for the lost time, the father and the son try to reduce the distance in this limited amount of time. The man is grateful to see his son's growth. Soon comes, however, the next morning and he has to go......Ryu Deok-Hwan, who plays the son, is a Korea's new aspiring actor in the spotlight. He has a good rapport with Cha Seung-Won, who plays the father.

[SYNOPSIS]
Successful Yu Tong works as a news reporter in the city. She is now doing a story on a couple who is determined to give birth to a physically-disabled baby. Although she now leads a successful life as a career woman, she was raised in an orphanage since her mother left her in front of a church. She still holds a grudge against her mother for discarding her. She, however, makes up her mind to search for her birth mother after she was told some facts by a Sister, who raised her at the orphanage, at her deathbed. With the encouragement of her childhood friend, Zhi Xuan, she grabs the faint glimmer of a clue. Against the backdrop of a magnificent view in Yunnan Province, she embarks on a self-searching journey. It is directed by Jacob Cheung, a director of "A BATTLE OF WITS".

[SYNOPSIS]
During the Sino-Japanese War, there was Manchuria Film Association, so-called the biggest film studio in the East, in Xinjing (now Changchun) in the northeastern part of China. In August 1945, in the chaos of postwar, Amakasu, the head of the Association, killed himself by taking poison, and the studio ended up in a mess. In the middle of all that, a young Chinese cinematographer, Guo Jin, of Manchuria Film Association, stands up to make new Chinese cinema on their own. They, however, do not have enough money, manpower or technology. While many Japanese staff members withdraw and return to Japan to avoid chaos, some Japanese filmmakers decide to stay, being moved by Guo Jin's passion. Xiang Yang, who finished studying filmmaking at Osaka University of Arts Graduate School, shot on all locations in China. Sadao Nakajima, who was his advisor in school, was a supervisor of the film.