Magic and Loss

Coco, a Beijing modern girl wants to spend a romantic and fancy Christmas vacation in Osaka. However the place where she gets in is Shinsekai ( "New World" in English, is an old neighbourhood located next to south Osaka city's downtown "Minami " area, as known as one of the most poorest and dangerous area in Osaka.)When she arrives there, she starts feeling regret and frustrated by the encounters and the landscapes which are far beyond her expectation. Suddenly she is involved in an incident surrounds a Chinese family there, meanwhile she starts fascinated by Shinsekai through her wondering. In this short and unusual Christmas vacation, Coco discovers a "Japan " she never knows and a "China" that she is not familiar with.

Aoi has dropped out of high school and gives birth to a baby son with her husband Masaya. They live in Okinawa, the Southern island of Japan where they were both born. To make ends meet, she starts working as a night-club hostess. Masaya loses his job and cannot deal with the family’s responsibilities. Their immaturity and dependence aggravate the relationship and continuous fights lead to a social downfall. Aoi’s bond with her son sets her on a path to find solutions.

In Fly Me to Minami, Lim’s fourth feature film and follow-up to his Stateless Trilogy, two transnational love stories intersect. The first of these stories is between Sherine, a fashion magazine editor from Hong Kong, and Tatsuya, an amateur photographer in Osaka. The second is between Seol-a, a Korean flight attendant, and Shinsuke, a married Korean-Japanese shopkeeper in Osaka’s Korea Town.

Fong Ka-Man, has been leading a middle class lifestyle. One day, during a heavy rain in the dusk, bearing the fear of illness, she is unwillingly staying away from the rain inside the tunnel. She first encounters a weird tramp, and then a young farmer who is rushing to deliver his harvest. It’s about how the “normal” passes by the “abnormal”. What makes them “normal” and “abnormal” seems to be realistic, but maybe it is just a void. Fong Ka-Man is anxious to find an exit from the difficult circumstance, but accidentally she finds out that what she yearns for is the disappeared end of this city.

Tourists, foreigners and outcasts converge on the streets of Osaka in this sprawling ensemble drama by Japan-based, Malaysia-born filmmaker Lim Kah Wai. His eighth feature explores the lesser-known aspects of the Asian melting pot city through the eyes and experiences of a dozen characters who struggle to find their place in society: among them a Nepali refugee with dreams of opening a restaurant, a Burmese student struggling to make ends meet while working two jobs, and a Taiwanese sex tourist who travels to meet his favorite adult video actress.

In Tokyo, a young man, Tomo, and his companion, Hiroko, have hardly any money left to their name. Convinced that their misfortune is part of a larger, unexplainable joke, they agree to throw themselves into all the encounters that come their way with the singular hope of defeating this joke before it plays out.

A bittersweet, hilarious, enlightening and inspirational road trip through Japanese arthouse cinemas with a heartily independent filmmaker, who also struggles to release his own movies in real life.

Ah Jie returns to his hometown after several years and soon realizes that no one remembers him. Even his family denies his relationship to them. Depressed, Ah Jie meets Lao Huang, who tells Ah Jie that he can help uncover the truth to why no one recognizes him.

Director Jay mysteriously disappears in 2019 and leaves behind a hard disc with the film “No Where, Now Here”. Actress Eva follows his steps to find him after she met Jay at the film shoot in 2018 film.

Lim Kah Wai, director of Your Lovely Smile, embarks on a similar journey as the protagonist in his film, visiting dozens of mini theatres from Okinawa to Hokkaido. Lim is not pitching his new film, but meeting the staff and owners of the theatres to make a documentary about how they struggle in the shrinking market. In empty cinema houses, the people speak of the common and personal challenges they encounter. Although they might have made different decisions – whether to hang on or move on, they share a pure love for and a genuine belief in cinema that they wish to pass on to the next generation.

Ferdi is an ethnic Turk who runs guest houses and apartments in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. He has earned money from the tourism and real estate boom over the past few years and has had the help of his wife Nurdan but despite her faithfulness and his adherence to Islam, he always chases single women who stay at his properties. Nurdan cannot endure Ferdi’s callous treatment of her and after a confrontation, she leaves. Ferdi gradually becomes aware of how much her existence is important to him and decides to go back to her home-town in Macedonia. Will he be able to win back her love or has Nurdan checked out of their marriage for good?

Adela has travelled from Macao to Croatia to visit the Museum of Broken Relationships where she left her boyfriend’s iPhone. A few random meetings later and Adela heads for Belgrade to meet someone named Alex who she met on Instagram. While waiting for his arrival, Adela continues to meet a diverse range of people and with each encounter she explores an unfamiliar land, its people, history and culture, all of which are so different from the country in which she was born. This is a quiet adventure where, in discovering new people, a person discovers herself.