Japan’s studied extravagance. South Korea’s surreal genre explosions. Thailand’s piercing character studies. Vietnam’s sultry family dramas. The scale, breadth and uniqueness of Asian cinema is one of global cinema’s true wonders. Accent on Asia brings together the very best of the films being made right on our doorstep.

	13 ASSASSINS (Japan, 126 min) "[Director] Takashi Miike is in top, slashtastic form." - Variety Kinetic Japanese director Takashi Miike (Audition, MIFF 2000, Sukiyaki Western Django, MIFF 2007) returns with an homage to his legendary compatriot Akira Kurosawa. More >
	BI, DON'T BE AFRAID (Vietnam/France/Germany, 92 min) "A heat-soaked panorama of human desires." - Screen International It is a stifling Hanoi summer and the unexpected return of six year-old Bi's dying grandfather has an unsettling influence on an already fragmented family. While his father finds solace in booze and the affections of his masseuse, and his single aunt grapples with her deeply suppressed sexual desires, Bi struggles to make sense of his fragmenting world. More >
	COLD FISH (Japan, 144 min) Cult Japanese director Sion Sono (Love Exposure, MIFF 2009; Guilty of Romance, MIFF 2011) brings us a gore-drenched, pitch black comedy about a man drawn into the clutches of a deranged couple. Shamoto, a quiet, bullied owner of a small tropical fish shop, lives an existence of unhappy mediocrity until he meets Murata, a charismatic, rich man with a much larger tropical fish shop. When Shamoto enters into a shady business deal with Murata and his wife, he discovers that beneath the gleaming facade there is something very wrong with his new friends. More >
	THE DAY HE ARRIVES (South Korea, 79 min) Sungjoon, a film director who no longer makes films, goes to Seoul to meet a friend who doesn't show. Lonely, he wanders among old haunts and bars. Amid the random circumstance of days spent in hard drinking and encountering strangers, acquaintances, and ex-lovers, Sungjoon confronts the unseen patterns shaping the contours of his own life. More >
	END OF ANIMAL (South Korea, 109 min) "A remarkable debut, a post-apocalyptic, existential quasi-monster movie on a shoestring budget, it recalls the darker works of Cormac McCarthy with an added supernatural tinge." - Cinephile After picking up a man in a baseball cap, heavily pregnant Soon-young and her taxi driver realise they've invited something more frightening into the cab when the stranger starts reeling off their most intimate secrets and counting down to an unknown event. Cue a blinding flash of light and Soon-young wakes up alone with only the howls of a distant creature to accompany her. More >
	ETERNITY (Thailand, 105 min) Winner of a Tiger award for Best Picture at the 2011 International Film Festival Rotterdam. Sivaroj Kongsakul makes a startling feature film debut with Eternity, a patient, consuming, all-encompassing metaphysical love story. More >
	THE FOURTH PORTRAIT (Taiwan, 105 min) A haunting depiction of loss and loneliness, channelled through the eyes of a child. When his father dies, with his mother long absent, ten year-old Xiang is alone. Caught stealing from other people's lunchboxes by the school janitor, social services track down Xiang's long estranged mother and send him to live with her, her malcontented husband and their new baby. Scorned and resented at home and lost in the world at large, Xiang retreats to portraiture as a way of understanding the life unfurling around him. More >
	GUILTY OF ROMANCE (Japan, 112 min) Japan's prince of transgressive cinema, Sion Sono brings us an erotic, psychosexual tale of sex, money and murder. With this risque, noir-esque film, director Sion Sono (Love Exposure, MIFF 2009; Cold Fish, MIFF 2011) presents a story based on a true-life crime, offering his trademark view on the darker side of society. More >
	HANEZU (Japan, 91 min) "A beautifully made, quietist and contemplative work... a delicately romantic and even subtly erotic love story." - Guardian In rural Japan, three lovers face the consequences of infidelity and the complications of motherhood, along with other larger questions, in this film about humanity and nature. More >
	HI-SO (Thailand, 102 min) "Things change quickly, so this film should be a snapshot of the way things are now. Like a polaroid, as soon as you take it, it's already fading into the past." - Aditya Assarat With his second feature Thai director Aditya Assarat returns to the themes of his acclaimed debut, Wonderful Town (MIFF 2007), with a visually elegant take on alienation and the universal search for identity and love. More >
	JOURNALS OF MUSAN (South Korea, 127 min) For a North Korean in South Korea, the grass isn't always greener. Having escaped the oppressiveness of North Korea, Jeon Seung-chul is determined to build a better life for himself amidst the freedoms of the South. However, introverted and ill-suited to Seoul society, Jeon begins to find his new home to be a cruel and unfeeling place. More >
	NORWEGIAN WOOD (MA15+) (Japan, 133 min) With this adaptation of the best-selling novel by Haruki Murakami, acclaimed Vietnamese-French director Tran Anh Hung (The Scent of Green Papaya, Cyclo) has created a dark and strikingly haunting film about love and loss. A young college student is pulled towards two very different women in this tragic love story and coming-of-age saga, set against the backdrop of social unrest of late 1960s Japan. More >
	OKI'S MOVIE (South Korea, 80 min) Sex, lies and filmmaking. In Oki's Movie, Hong Sang-soo (Hahaha, MIFF 2010; Night and Day, MIFF 2009), presents a love triangle told in four chapters. The woman at the centre of the affair is Oki, a university student majoring in film and simultaneously wrestling with the romantic expectations of two very different men: an older professor and a former filmmaking student. More >
	OUTRAGE (Japan, 109 min) "As violent, amoral and misanthropic as a Jacobean play... arguably [Kitano's] best film in a decade." - Hollywood Reporter Legendary director Takeshi Kitano (Hana-Bi, MIFF 1998) returns to the Yakuza genre he has made his own, starring as Otomo, a Yakuza subordinate ordered to bring a rival crime gang into line. But as Otomo's intervention triggers a vicious cycle of retribution, hidden agendas and questionable motives pull all sides into a downward spiral of doublecrosses and reprisals. More >
	THE PIANO IN A FACTORY (China, 105 min) "Simple in its measured and assured direction, The Piano in a Factory establishes Zhang Meng as one of the most vibrant voices in Chinese cinema today." - Toronto International Film Festival Chen, an unemployed ex-steelworker and amateur accordionist, loves music nearly as much as he loves his young daughter Xiao Yuan. When his estranged wife shows up demanding a divorce and custody of Xiao, Chen resolves to do whatever it takes to keep his ramshackle family together. More >
	TATSUMI (Singapore/Indonesia, 98 min) "A fascinating and ultimately moving tribute to a seminal comic artist's dark, disquieting but powerful works." - Hollywood Reporter Filmmaker Eric Khoo (My Magic, MIFF 2009; Be With Me) adapts for the screen the spellbinding work of Yoshihiro Tatsumi, father of the gekiga comic-art movement of the late 50s. Tatsumi's dark tales of a postwar Japan are presented for the first time on film, still as radical and haunting as the day they were written. More >
	THE UNJUST (South Korea, 120 min) "Achieves a happy marriage between commercial savvy and artistic integrity in its hard-hitting depiction of Seoul as a city of corruption." - Hollywood Reporter A massive critical and commercial success in South Korea, The Unjust is a complex crime thriller, set against the background of police and corporate corruption in contemporary Seoul. More >
	WINTER VACATION (China, 91 min) "Already a poet and novelist, Li Hongqi is also a talented filmmaker, here managing to dot an ultra-minimalist slice of life with speckles of wry deadpan humour." - Time Out London The monotony of life gets the absurdist comedy treatment in Winter Vacation, a stark presentation of life in a rural town at the end of the winter break. For four idle, aimless teenagers, stuck here over the holidays, the snowbound wasteland of a town offers nothing to do but to while away the hours. More >
	THE YELLOW SEA (South Korea, 140 min) Rising star of the South Korean film scene Na Hong-jin returns with an ambitious follow up to The Chaser (MIFF 2009) that was a box office hit domestically. In a lawless Chinese border town, where the boundaries of North Korea, China and Russia intersect, Gu-nam lives one day at a time. Faced with mounting mahjong gambling debts, he reluctantly accepts a proposal to assassinate a business man in South Korea. But when things don't go as planned he finds he must flee for his life - with the cops, a rival hitman and an army of underworld thugs hot on his tail. More >