A look at Asia’s best features of the year
Filmmakers from across the region delivered impressive works in a range of genres in 2023. Here are our writer’s top 12, ranked from good to great
As 2023 draws to a close, it’s time to take stock of the year’s most exciting and noteworthy feature films from around Asia.
From effects-laden blockbusters and dramas to impressive debuts from emerging talent, here are this writer’s picks for the 12 best new films from across the region.
12. In My Mother’s Skin
Set in the Philippines during World War II, Kenneth Dagatan’s dark fairy tale follows the efforts of a young girl to care for her ailing mother.
As the men are distracted by a seemingly hopeless treasure hunt, and the Japanese occupation encircles their once opulent home, the young heroine becomes increasingly bewitched by a mysterious woman living out in the forest.
Dagatan’s film is a visually ravishing supernatural treat brimming with ancient magic.
11. 24 Hours With Gaspar
It is a rare treat when a science fiction film emerges from Southeast Asia’s independent film scene, and even rarer when it proves as good as Yosep Anggi Noen’s cyberpunk detective thriller.
Rena Rahadian plays the titular motorbikeriding sleuth with a weak heart who has 24 hours to take down a notorious criminal and unveil the truth behind his childhood sweetheart’s disappearance.
This is the kind of bold swing that happens all too rarely in Asian filmmaking, and thoroughly deserves our support.
10. Perfect Days
Wim Wenders fashioned an absorbing and enigmatic drama, conceived in collaboration with the Tokyo Toilet Project, in which 16 designers created innovative public conveniences around the Japanese capital’s Shibuya district.
Koji Yakusho was named best actor at Cannes for his role as a toilet cleaner with a love for Western music, literature, photography and nature.
The film succeeds in championing the nobility of the mundane while showcasing a fascinating array of newly commissioned public toilets.
9. Back Home
First-time director Nate Tse Ka-ki’s eerily unsettling ghost story is one of the most keenly observed commentaries on Hong Kong’s fast-evolving status.
Anson Kong Ip-sang, of boy band Mirror, plays a troubled man who returns to the city after years abroad. Haunted by childhood memories, he returns to his old flat, where the building’s residents give him a creepy homecoming.
Tse’s confident debut hints at a bright future for genre filmmaking in Hong Kong.
8. Concrete Utopia
In the wake of a massive earthquake, only one block of flats remains standing. For survivors in the surrounding area it becomes a beacon of hope, but for the residents it must be fiercely protected.
Um Tae-hwa’s effects-laden disaster film serves as a scathing allegory of South Koreans’ obsession with property and status. Lee Byung-hun gives his best performance in years as a mysterious stranger who rises from the rubble to become dubious leader of the estate’s inundated population.
7. Evil Does Not Exist
Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s follow-up to his Oscarwinning Drive My Car is a sombre and deceptively chilling affair about the slow encroachment of urban sprawl upon Japan’s idyllic countryside.
Hitoshi Omika is brilliant as the jack of all trades in a small community that has been targeted as the site for a glamorous campsite for tourists. What began as a video installation to accompany the music of Eiko Ishibashi becomes a beautiful, yet foreboding story of old and new worlds colliding.
6. Hidden Blade
Of all Tony Leung Chiu-wai’s performances in 2023, his turn as a morally conflicted Shanghai intelligence director in Cheng Er’s labyrinthine spy thriller was the most compelling. Set during the Japanese occupation and boasting sumptuous production design, this delightfully noirish indulgence succeeds as a loving ode to the cloak-and-dagger adventures of yesteryear.
The film also boasts a star-making turn from rising heartthrob Wang Yibo, as a young officer under Leung’s command who finds his former fiancée (Zhang Jingyi) is part of the resistance.
5. Killing Romance
Lee Won-suk’s genre-bending comedy musical delivered a welcome shot of playful silliness, even as it skewered a number of serious issues. Lee Hanee stars as a celebrity who becomes trapped in an abusive relationship and calls upon her small yet devoted fan base to save her, but it is Lee Sun-kyun who steals the show as the film’s grotesquely over-the-top pantomime villain.
4. In Broad Daylight
Jennifer Yu Heung-ying cements her position as one of Hong Kong’s most compelling and versatile leading ladies with her role as a jaded and worldweary newspaper reporter who uncovers a shocking scandal involving negligence, exploitation and abuse at a private care home.
Based on real events, Lawrence Kan Kwanchun’s riveting drama is one of the most accomplished Hong Kong films in recent memory.
It boasts memorable turns from a rich ensemble cast, including David Chiang Da-wei, Bowie Lam Bo-yee and Rachel Leung Yung-ting.
3. Tiger Stripes
In one of the year’s most electrifying debuts, director Amanda Nell Eu turns a scathing critique of Malaysia’s suffocating patriarchy into a bodyhorror fable, as a 12-year-old girl from a rural community faces a torrent of abusive body shaming when her body begins to change.
Tiger Stripes confronts the entanglement of religion and mythology facing a generation of emboldened and defiant young women.
2. The First Slam Dunk
Takehiko Inoue’s exhilarating, edge-of-your-seat tour de force combines 3D computer graphics with motion capture technology and traditional hand-drawn animation to transport audiences into the world of the Shohoku High basketball team in a way never experienced before.
Unfolding almost in real time over the course of a single must-win showdown, Inoue’s film not only has some of the most innovative sporting moments ever committed to screen, but also takes us inside the head space of his players as they wrestle with grief, self-doubt and the desire to succeed.
1. Godzilla Minus One
It is astonishing that after 70 years Toho Studios can still generate a Godzilla film that evokes such emotion and humanity even as its lumbering kaiju protagonist decimates downtown Tokyo.
Incoming director Takashi Yamazaki strikes the perfect balance between affecting period melodrama and dazzling action spectacle, as a band of traumatised World War II survivors, led by Ryunosuke Kamiki’s disgraced kamikaze pilot, are forced to rally together to save their homeland from a seemingly insurmountable threat.
[The First Slam Dunk] has some of the most innovative sporting moments ever committed to screen