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WITH less than a month to go before its 2021 edition, QCinema International Film Festival has announced the movies to be shown under its new Asian Shorts program for its hybrid festival.
Showcasing fresh new voices from Southeast Asia, the Asian Shorts line-up features recent titles that have competed in major festivals abroad. It shines a spotlight on emerging Asian names in the festival circuit, including two Filipino shorts, for their Philippine premieres.
Dear to Me by Monica Vanesa Tedja won a Special Mention award at this year’s Locarno Open Door Shorts. Tackling themes of repression and myth, the film centers on a vacationing young man in a remote Indonesian island who secretly hopes to discover a reincarnated deer as he ponders finding his soulmate.
Sunrise in My Mind is about a young beauty salon employee who gives into her restrained interest with a delivery man who spends his evenings driving through Phnom Penh’s streets by motorbike. Danech San’s second short had its world premiere at Busan and had its European premiere at the 2021 Berlin Critics’ Week.
New Abnormal is a reflection on human life during the COVID-19 pandemic in Thailand and follows different characters from various scenarios who share the same awkward situation. Sorayos Prapapan’s new short is a follow-up to his previous festival favorite, Death of the Sound Man.
Live In Cloud-Cuckoo Land depicts the love story of a woman who works at a wedding dress shop and a local busker. Vietnamese co-directors Vu Minh Nghia and Pham Hoang Minh Thy show colorful slices of life, including a wedding, a traffic jam, a theft, a miraculous incarnation, and a love story.
New Abnormal and Live In Cloud-Cuckoo Land were selected to compete at the Orizzonti Short Films Competition in the 2021 Venice Film Festival.
Elijah Canlas headlines How to Die Young in Manila where he trails a group of hustlers in the streets of Manila, thinking one of them may be his hook-up for the night. Petersen Vargas’ return to short filmmaking was an official selection in Busan last year.
Winner of a number of awards including the Silver Bear at this year’s Berlinale, Rafael Manuel’s Filipinana is about Isabel, the new employee in an exclusive golf club who’s looking to subvert the system.
QCinema will be held from Nov. 26 to Dec. 5, with screenings are at Gateway Cineplex 10. Streaming is via KTX.ph.
