New Asian Currents
[Venues] F3 F5 Forum Yamagata 3, 5
We give you this year’s New Asian Currents program—twenty gems in the rough that boldly carve out new ways of expression, inviting you to worlds captured and imagined by the filmmakers.
- Jurors:
- Iguchi Nami (Filmmaker)
One more juror to be announced.
3350 KM- SYRIA, FRANCE / 2023 / 13 min
Director: Sara Kontar
An online conversation between a father living in Syria and his asylum-seeking daughter in France. The connection is unstable: the image full of noise, and the audio often interrupted. The two are barely linked by the tenuous electric signal displayed on dusty monitors.
Collective Dreams Stitched into December- INDIA / 2025 / 60 min
Director: Bappadittya Sarkar
An independent film screening, workers’ hands sewing blankets, the work of newspaper delivery people, stories of strife, and the poetry of crows . . . Images from a December in Jaipur comes into focus through this storytelling patchwork.
CycleMahesh- INDIA / 2024 / 61 min
Director: Suhel Banerjee
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Mahesh sets off for his home 2,000 km away—by bicycle. This bizarre and fantastic road movie is woven from the dreams and realities of the filmmaker and young protagonist.
Dancing Palestine- PALESTINE, UK / 2024 / 37 min
Director: Lamees Almakkawy
The Palestinian people have been dispossessed of their land and are in danger of losing their identity. By dancing the traditional “Dabke,” they house their history in their bodies, and bring it with them into the future.
Hair, Paper, Water- BELGIUM, FRANCE / 2025 / 70 min
Directors: Trương Minh Quý, Nicolas Graux
A woman, born in a cave, looks after her daughter and grandchildren while trying to pass on her Rục language, which is on the brink of extinction. Stories from her own past, folk tales, and dreams dissolve into the grainy texture of the film.
Hakishka- IRAN / 2024 / 49 min
Directors: Narges Judaki, Iman Paknahad
Spring. During Hakishka, a key event in their town’s traditional festivities, women gather on a hilltop to dance. An irrepressible vitality flows from their talking, singing, and dancing, in this festival so full of life.
The Last Visit- ESTONIA, THAILAND / 2023 / 16 min
Director: Keawalee Warutkomain
From parting with a beloved aunt to coming to terms with the separation. The five year journey of bereavement becomes a hand-drawn animation film created on the pages of a book by an Estonia-based filmmaker who was unable to attend the funeral in Thailand.
Luo Luo’s Future- CHINA / 2024 / 69 min
Director: Luo Luo
Luo Luo entrusts her camera to her seven-year-old granddaughter, Manman. Through her eyes, the interior of their small home comes to glitter like jewels in a treasure box. We learn once again how to partake in the endless joy of the world.
No Exorcism Film- THAILAND / 2024 / 20 min
Director: Komtouch Napattaloong
Grainy images of Thai cities appear as if in a nightmare viewed on an old television screen. A despondent mechanical voice murmurs feelings of guilt about the past to the ancestors and a sense of anxiety about the future.
- Shot the Voice of Freedom
- AFGHANISTAN, GERMANY / 2024 / 70 min
Director: Zainab Entezar
Under the Taliban regime, women have been deprived of their right to live freely. Smartphone cameras record the fight of feminist activists who, even under gunfire, continue to raise their voices in protest.
SIE...- INDONESIA / 2024 / 30 min
Director: Yosef Levi
An elderly woman lives in the nook of a mountain, cultivating the land and living among animals. One day, her younger brother, who has taken up the mantle of maintaining the land, suddenly loses his goats . . . A moment in pastoral life is depicted across a series of rich, lyrical images.
The Silent Path- INDONESIA / 2024 / 77 min
Director: Yonri Revolt
A Dutch missionary named Soebertono Mote once whiled away the hours with the director as though they were family. Made after his death, the film bears testimony to his life with the Papua people during the turbulent times—stories discovered in his diaries.
- SPI
- TAIWAN / 2025 / 98 min
Director: Sayun Simung
The extended family gathers around the grandmother as she stokes the fire in her kiln. By the director of Millets Back Home (YIDFF 2015 NAC), who continues to explore her Tayal roots as if in a dreamlike, spiritual conversation with her late grandfather.
- A Stone’s Throw
- PALESTINE, LEBANON, CANADA / 2024 / 40 min
Director: Razan AlSalah
The life of a man who once worked at the oil fields on Zirku Island and now lives in Beirut, having been displaced from his hometown of Haifa. The film interweaves his personal journey with the broader history and present of the region shaped by the construction of oil pipelines.
The Tales of the Tale- TAIWAN / 2024 / 30 min
Directors: Song Cheng-ying, Hu Chin-ya
The once prosperous mining town of Houtong. The film collects voices of elderly folk who lived through those times—encounters with the supernatural. Their stories are lights cast down into the darkness of that near-faded history.
Track_ing- KOREA, KAZAKHSTAN / 2024 / 22 min
Directors: Lee Chanyeol, Cho Hanna, Samgar Rakym, Ali Tynybekov
500 × 500 pixel boxes mechanically track sections of images shot inside a train connecting South Korea to Kazakhstan. There is a hint of irony in the impersonal text output from the boxes.
What Did You Dream Last Night, Parajanov?- GERMANY / 2024 / 81 min
Director: Faraz Fesharaki
The director, separated from his parents in Iran and his cousin in Vienna, records their easy and idling online chats over the course of ten years. Memories of longing, laughter, and struggle fill the screen as the film weaves together these many inimitable moments in time.
When the Trees Sway, the Heart Stirs- KOREA / 2025 / 40 min
Director: Lee Jiyoon
Residents of Seoul’s Jeongneung Valley have begun to relocate in anticipation of a regional redevelopment. We rest our gaze on everyday scenes of life and skip alongside the stories of residents and former residents.
Writing Hawa- FRANCE, THE NETHERLANDS, QATAR, AFGHANISTAN / 2024 / 85 min
Directors: Najiba Noori, Rasul Noori
This was supposed to be a story of Hawa—a mother who was forced into marriage as a young child some forty years ago, who taught herself to read and write, and who gained her independence by opening a small textile business. But her future, and the future of all women, was torn away with the return of the Taliban regime.
You Are the Truck and I Am the Deer- BELGIUM, HONG KONG / 2023 / 5 min
Director: Max Ferguson
The pain latent in every emotion radiates from the entire torso. A woman’s body, perhaps the director’s, is subjected to all manners of cutting and pasting like a thin sheet of paper, to mutate form in this experimental short documentary.