7th East Asia Film Festival
The East Asia Film Festival Ireland offers innovative, independent, and inspiring cinema from across East Asia, and presents works otherwise unavailable from both emerging and established filmmakers.
They run an annual festival hosted by the Irish Film Institute in Dublin’s Temple Bar, and a special on tour programme in venues in Galway, Limerick and Cork, together with regular screenings throughout the year via their EAFFI Discoveries initiative.
The seventh edition of the East Asia Film Festival Ireland (EAFFI) returns this year from 30 March to 2 April in Dublin, and 1-6 April on tour in Galway, Limerick and Cork. The programme brings to audiences in Ireland, works from prominent and emerging writers and directors from diverse cultural and social backgrounds across East Asian cinema.
These films reflect on individual and communal experiences and dynamics in insightful and human ways. Inspiring fiction, documentary, classic and self-reflexive film essays explore and expose the world around them in vivid ways, asking questions about society, culture, politics, personal and collective history in our ever more challenging times.
EAFFI is funded by the Arts Council of Ireland.
Full movie info and tickets can be found below.
ABSENCE - April 1st
Chinese writer-director Wu Lang’s striking debut feature tells the story of Han Jiangyu (Lee Kang-Sheng) who returns to his hometown on Hainan Island after ten years in jail. Han Jiangyu wants to reconnect with Su Hong (Li Meng) and her child, Yao, but who exactly are they to him? His former lover? His child? The town has radically changed meanwhile, with lots of skyscrapers being built, and Su Hong is planning to buy an apartment in one of them. Han Jiangyu gets a job through a developer friend Kai, who’s dad it seems was the reason Han Jiangyu went to jail. Absence has a haunting slow rhythm, and the camera, drifting through the landscape seems almost like another actor. Echoing Antonioni, each character is caught by a sense of alienation, struggling to communicate in their old world which has become a new one.
Absence had its world premiere at the Berlinale International Film Festival 2023, Official Selection, Encounters Section.
THE NOVELIST'S FILM - April 2nd
Film writer-curator Dennis Lim remarks that in Hong’s films from the past decade ‘women are the true heroes’, and this was never more true than here. Veteran novelist Junhee (Lee Hyeyoung, In Front of Your Face), has lost her inspiration. She makes a daytrip to a small town where she visits a former colleague and bookstore owner, and this leads to chance encounters – first, a filmmaker who has failed to adapt one of her books, and then actress Kilsoo (luminous Kim Minhee) who is also questioning her role as an artist. Feeling inspired Junhee wants to make a short film with Kilsoo. Prolific festival favourite South Korean writer-director Hong Sangsoo returns with his regular troupe of actors in another sparkling conversation-driven comedy-drama shot (almost entirely) in sumptuous black and white. Delight in Hong’s exploration of artistic inspiration and creativity, filmmaking, writing, and social relationships in the company of old and new friends!Korean language with English subtitles.
EAT DRINK MAN WOMAN - April 5th
We are delighted to present, with the support of the Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute, the restored version of Ang Lee’s classic and ‘exquisite’ multi-generational Eat Drink Man Woman. The last film in Lee's family trilogy known as the 'father knows best' series, Eat Drink Man Woman was the first of them to be shot in his native contemporary Taipei, a place he found quite foreign upon returning there to film. Served by a fabulous cast (and fascinating food!), the film tells the story of widowed master chef Chu (Sihung Lung) who lives with his three adult daughters – Jia-Jen (Yang Kuei-Mei); Jia-Chien (Wu Chien-Lien); and Jia-Ning (Wang Yu-Wen). The weekly family gathering revolves around elaborate Sunday dinners prepared affectionally by Chu for his daughters, and occasionally a friend and neighbour. There they share the changes in their lives, each of them using this central moment to make important announcements and revelations, all to tender and wonderful effect.