The eighth annual Asian World Film Festival (AWFF) unveiled its initial Competition, Centerpiece, and Special Screenings as well as the first of three Theme Day Screenings, all to take place November 9 – 18, 2022, in multiple Los Angeles locations. The Festival also announced that first-time sponsors Panavision and StarsCollective will join the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) in honoring AWFF award-winning filmmakers with scholarships and grants.
“We’re thrilled to showcase a lineup of at least 18 Academy Award® submissions along with the work of tomorrow’s breakout filmmakers of Asian descent,” said Georges N. Chamchoum, AWFF executive director. “We’re also excited to arm select award-winners with the means to continue expressing their creative ideas.”
INITIAL LINE-UP
To date, the Competition Screenings will include the U.S. premiere of WORLD WAR III (Iran) and the L.A. premiere of JOYLAND (Pakistan), along with AJOOMMA (Singapore), AURORA’S SUNRISE (Armenia), BUTTERFLY ON THE WINDOWPANE (Nepal), CINEMA SABAYA (Israel), LIFE (Kazakhstan), GODDAMNED ASURA (Taiwan), KERR (Turkey), HOME FOR SALE (Kyrgyzstan), A LONG BREAK (Georgia), MEDITERRANEAN FEVER (Palestine), and ON THE JOB: THE MISSING 8 (Philippines). All are official Oscar submissions from their respective countries. GOLIATH (Kazakhstan) and LAST FILM SHOW (India) will also compete.
There will be two Centerpiece Screenings—the U.S. premiere of jihadist terror drama REBEL (Belgium), which showed at Cannes 2022 to strong critical reception, and the espionage thriller HUNT (South Korea), the directorial debut of multi award-winning actor Lee Jung-Jae.
Special Screenings will include Oliver Stone’s anti-war drama HEAVEN AND EARTH, the culmination of the Oscar-winning filmmaker’s Vietnam Trilogy. A celebration will follow with Stone, cast and crew members, and Vietnamese-American writer and humanitarian Le Ly Hayslip, whose autobiography inspired the film.
Central Asia Film Day is the first announced Theme Day and will be capped by a screening of HOME FOR SALE, directed by Taalaibek Kulmendeev.
FILMMAKER SCHOLARSHIPS AND GRANTS
Premiere camera and optics company Panavision will honor two AWFF awardees with a camera package to shoot a future project. A $60,000 Panavision Camera Grant containing the company’s cutting-edge filmmaking equipment will be presented to the recipient of the first-ever Snow Leopard Award for Best Cinematography. A second $15,000 Grant will be given to the HFPA Scholarship Award winner.
For the fourth year, HFPA will host a competition of short films created by Asian and Asian-American filmmakers and gift a $5,000 HFPA Scholarship Award to the winner. Global filmmaker and artist incubator and community StarsCollective will present the StarsCollective Emerging Filmmaker Award of $2000 to the runner-up of the HPFA short film competition.
Detailed screening information can be found on the AWFF website. As previously announced, AWFF will open with the world premiere of DECIBEL and close with DECISION TO LEAVE. Additional films to be announced shortly.
AWFF sponsors and partners include: Aitysh USA, Peer, Dr. Dao Medical Center, Winn Slavin Fine Art, Dutcher Crossing, Panavision, The One Heart Movement, The Bruce Lee Foundation, Ha Phuong Foundation, Barco, Korean Cultural Center (KCC, LA), Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), Asia Society, Southern California, Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment (CAPE), Taiwan Academy, Los Angeles, Taipei Economic and Cultural Office, Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA), American Red Cross/Ladies Tiffany Circle, AKIpress News Agency, Nova Entertainment, Jackson Market and Deli, and Emporium Thai.
