‘The Rye Horn’ Review: Womanhood is a Trial in an Earthy, Elemental, San Sebastian-Winning Drama

Guangzhou-based director Choy Ji has filmed Hong Kong from a perspective we’ve rarely seen before in his debut feature Borrowed Time, which played at Pingyao film festival this week after screening in Busan’s New Currents competition. 

Chinese director Ning Hao has flown directly from Busan film festival in South Korea to China’s Pingyao International Film Festival (PYIFF) with his latest film, The Movie Emperor, starring Andy Lau. 

Hopeless.The actor made headlines recently when he revealed that he had rejected a fee for his work in the film.During an interview on the latest episode of Lee Dong-jin’s YouTube series, Song commented on the interest in his lack of payment. “Things went bigger than I expected,” he laughed (translated by SBS Star).

Naman Ramachandran Hansal Mehta‘s “The Buckingham Murders,” which premieres at the BFI London Film Festival, will be the first in a franchise. Written by Aseem Arrora, Raghav Raj Kakker and Kashyap Kapoor, the film follows Jasmeet Bhamra (portrayed by Kareena Kapoor Khan), a detective and mother who, after losing her own child, must investigate the murder of a 10-year-old in Buckinghamshire, going down a rabbit hole of secrets, where almost everyone in the small town becomes a suspect.

The Wrestler, directed by Bangladeshi-Canadian filmmaker Iqbal H. Chowdhury, and September 1923, from Japan’s Tatsuya Mori, picked up the New Currents Awards as Busan International Film Festival wrapped a busy 28th edition on October 13. 

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Iqbal H. Choudhury’s “The Wrestler” and Mori Tatsutya’s “September 1923” were announced joint winners of the New Currents competition at the Busan International Film Festival. “The Wrester” “was like a single round match, magically depicting an exciting narrative,” the jury said.

EXCLUSIVE: Indonesian actor Reza Rahadian and director Yosep Anggi Noen are attending Busan International Film Festival with their dystopian crime drama 24 Hours With Gaspar, which is receiving its world premiere in the festival’s Jiseok competition. 

Naman Ramachandran Devashish Makhija’s survival thriller “Joram,” which is playing at the Busan International Film Festival, will be released theatrically worldwide by Zee Studios in December. The film, which premiered at Rotterdam earlier this year, is in Busan’s A Window on Asian Cinema strand. Eminent actor Manoj Bajpayee, who previously starred in Makhija’s 2016 short “Taandav” and played the title role in “Bhonsle,” plays Dasru, a tribal migrant worker in Mumbai whose past catches up with him and he must flee with his infant daughter Joram.

EXCLUSIVE: Anand Ramayya’s Karma Film is set to produce Maya Bastian’s The Devil’s Tears alongside Canada’s Blackout Media, while Shant Joshi’s Fae Pictures has also come on board to executive produce. 

Naman Ramachandran The Indonesian film industry is poised to spread its wings globally as the country’s filmmaking boom is the subject of a focus at the Busan International Film Festival. Films from the country now routinely get selected and win prizes at major international festivals. The local market in Indonesia, which has the fourth-largest population in the world with 277 million, is rapidly expanding with homegrown productions accounting for a significant share.

Naman Ramachandran Bangladesh is a vital presence at the 2023 Busan International Film Festival with three films in competition and a film at the Asian Project Market. The current wave of Bangladeshi cinema was heralded by Mostofa Sarwar Farooki‘s “Television,” which closed Busan in 2012. The festival has subsequently screened almost every major work emerging from the country.

U.S. producer E. Bennett Walsh, who has made films including Mortal Kombat, Meg 2: The Trench and The Kite Runner across the APAC region, says he’s got his eye on Japan and Korea as the next hot destinations for footloose Hollywood productions.

Naman Ramachandran Hansal Mehta‘s Netflix series “Scoop” on Sunday won the prizes for best Asian TV series and best lead actress for Karishma Tanna at the Busan International Film Festival‘s 2023 Asia Content Awards and Global OTT Awards. The hard hitting crime drama series is based on journalist Jigna Vora’s 2019 memoir “Behind Bars in Byculla: My Days in Prison.” Tanna plays the lead role of Jagruti Pathak, a scoop-hunting journalist who is caught in the nexus of the police, the underworld and the media.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief After making four documentary features about border conflicts, ethnicity, prostitution and human rights, Thai director Nontawat Numbenchapol picks up many of the same themes in his first fiction feature “Doi Boi.” The film, which premieres this week in the Jiseok competition section of the Busan International Film Festival, is the story of three young men living on the margins of society in Thailand and their common quest for justice. The characters are an illegal immigrant from Myanmar working, despite his own heterosexuality, as a gay prostitute in Chiang Main, a customer and an on-the-run political activist he is trying to help. The narrative takes in a large number of the social and political problems that have beset seemingly idyllic Thailand in recent years – undocumented workers, illegal immigrants fleeing the civil war in Myanmar, an oppressive political power structure, enforced ‘disappearance’ of those who the government’s political opponents and critics, police brutality – and traffic jams. “I was surprised to find so many immigrant men [from Myanmar’s Shan region] as sex workers in Chiang Mai.

Naman Ramachandran Sri Lankan auteur Prasanna Vithanage is back at the Busan International Film Festival with thriller “Paradise,” which is in the Jiseok competition. The film follows Indian couple – streaming content producer Kesav (Roshan Mathew, Sundance 2023 series “Poacher”) and blogger Amritha (Darshana Rajendran, “Hridayam”) – who are on vacation in Sri Lanka during the country’s ongoing economic crisis. They are the victims of a robbery and find themselves in the thick of the agitations.

Naman Ramachandran After his fiction feature debut, the absurdist satire “Eeb Allay Ooo!,” Indian filmmaker Prateek Vats is readying political comedy “Chronicles of a Confession.” The film is a selection at the Busan International Film Festival‘s Asian Project Market. “Eeb Allay Ooo!” won big at the Mumbai Film Festival and went on to play at the Berlinale, Sao Paolo and Valladolid among many other festivals.

Naman Ramachandran The renaissance in Indonesian cinema is being celebrated at the Busan International Film Festival this year with 15 films, shorts and series being showcased. Hilmar Farid, Director General of Culture at Indonesia‘s Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology, is leading a 50-strong delegation of filmmakers, committee members and media to the festival. Variety spoke with Farid about the country’s boom and its upcoming opportunities and challenges.

Naman Ramachandran “Where the Rivers Run South,” the Nepalese project at the Busan International Film Festival‘s Asian Project Market, has received support from the Asian Cinema Fund’s script development pool. The film, which aims to tackle head on two timely issues in Nepal today – migrant labor and patriarchy – marks the feature directorial debut of Suraj Poudel, who previously served as editor on Cannes-winning 2022 short “Lori.” Poudel is an alumnus of Busan’s Asian Film Academy, where he won the Chanel X award for most promising filmmaker award in 2022.

Jessica Kiang One of the tiniest lived-in details in Bangladeshi writer-director Biplob Sarkar‘s debut feature — which is really a cluster of tiny, lived-in details — is the sheet of adhesive bindis that Kajal (a delightfully natural Ehan Rashid) snaffles from his mother’s dressing table. The bindis, or as they’re known in these parts, teeps, are worn by Banglasdeshi women of all creeds and religions, but along with an orangey-pink lipstick also taken from the dresser, for Kajal they represent more than mere cosmetic adornment.

Naman Ramachandran Iran’s Arsalan Amiri, who won two awards at Venice for his debut feature “Zalava,” is at the Busan International Film Festival‘s Asian Project Market with “For the Girls of the Tribe.” Inspired by a real historical event that took place in 1905 in Iran, the film will tell the story of a group of peasants who rescue two girls among dozens who were kidnapped by rebels. The girls have information about a betrayal and are taken before the ruler to provide their testimony but he refuses to accept it, as, according to tradition, a woman’s testimony is only half as valuable as a man’s. “For hundreds of years before this event and even decades after, this situation has recurred in different parts of the world: a group of women is oppressed and most of society, the government and even some other women are silent or passive about it due to fear, benefit or convenience,” Amiri told Variety.