The 28th ifva Awards
Asian New Force Category Jury Meeting
Jurors: Lee Isaac Chung (Chung), Clarence Tsui (Tsui), Ruby Yang (Yang)ifva Representatives: Kattie Fan (Fan), Sandy Lai, Anson Yip, Vanessa Ying

Fan:

Today, our mission is to select the award winners from these 10 finalist works.
There is one Gold Award, one Silver Award, and also a Special Mention. The
Gold Award has a cash prize of HK$20,000, Silver Award has a cash prize of
HK$10,000, and for Special Mention, there is no cash prize. Even though theoverall excellence of the Special Mention work may not be as good as otheraward winners, there may be something special to mention. That’s why we havea Special Mention award in this category.
Let me give you a bit of background information. Clarence has also been the juror
on an earlier round of selection. Altogether we received 405 submissions under
this category. We went through 2 rounds of selections, the first round was apreselection, with three jurors helping us go through all the works, and thenpicking 67 works among the 405 submissions. Then, we have the first-roundselections, with Clarence being part of the jury. Together with two other jury
members, they picked the 10 finalists among the 67 shortlisted works. In today’sround we are going to select the awards. Maybe Clarence can share with us why
we picked these 10 works when we discussed them later.

Tsui:

These are the works that I had a hand in selecting for the final round. Just a bit ofbackground information. In the previous round, us three jury members saw some
60-odd titles. We had quite a long and heated discussion about the titles we had
to include in this round. Of course, I do have my preferences, which wereexpressed in the previous meeting. Should I say what my preferences are, orwhether we should start with a clean slate?

Chung:

Either way you want to do it, that sounds great to me. It seems like the selections
are all quite strong. I don’t have any doubts as to why you picked any of them.

Fan:

Maybe we can begin with the first one, Neither Nor, a Malaysian work.

Yang:

I think it’s a very ambitious work. It expresses the themes of race, politics, religion,and there’s too much that’s not expressed deep enough. Overall, the young castwere well-chosen, but I think it’s too ambitious for what it tries to express.
Structure-wise, it's interesting. The direction, for a Malaysian filmmaker, I think1

it is a breakthrough.
Tsui:

I agree with what Ruby said. There were quite a few issues that the director wanted
to touch on, as evident from the archive footage in the end, about theestablishment and founding of the Malaysian nation, but I don't see how it
actually gels with the abstract narrative for the three young students. I mean, theywent about with their own doubts and fears. But how it actually gels with themore explicit nature of the archive footage, I'm not sure. If the director hasn't
included the archive footage in the end in such length, that would actually bebetter, in my opinion. But if the director were to show all these things about themultiracial nature of the Malaysian nation and what that means for the national
narrative, it wasn't really shown that much in the proper narrative itself. I'm notsure how everything managed to come together.

Chung:

I agree with what you both have said. I thought it's very conceptual. I thought it's
interesting what the filmmaker is doing and trying to achieve. I thought thecompositions were really strong. I thought the visual language was really good.
The locations were really amazing. I thought they found some really great places
to film. And I liked the film within a film that they were trying to do. I thoughtthat was pretty clever. Although the actors were probably not professional, they
were quite good. When that happens, there is a good director who's guiding theprocess pretty well. I think the strength of the director really came down to theacting and also the look of the film. But on that conceptual level and theemotional level, I didn't necessarily fully know what the concept was.
Emotionally I didn't feel as much as I wish I had, but I thought it's still a very
good film for what the person was trying to achieve.

Fan:

Anything to add? If no. We can move on to the second one, Split Ends.

Yang:

This is a very hot topic right now. I love both protagonists and the ending is notpredictable. The set up with the key is very clever. It shows a slice of Iraniansociety and the attitude towards having a hijab and the young people trying torebel. I think that’s captured well. The woman was especially convincing for me,
and even the officer is too. It’s a very simple film with just the office setting, andI thought it’s well-directed. It’s simple and direct. It well achieved its goal.

Tsui:

I like the film a lot. It’s quite an audacious attempt in criticizing what’s happening
right now in Iran. The dialogue and the screenplay are pretty good in terms of theheated conversations and acerbic one-liners, which illustrate quite well the power
dynamics between the authorities and the helpless masses who are subjected totyranny. The aesthetics is not exactly very new. The social realist approach
towards the problems faced by the Iranian people, it’s done very well but not2

exactly very innovative. Maybe I’m a more pessimistic guy, but the ending looks
too happy ever after. They just rebel against the authorities by removing the hijab
and taunting the authorities to film them—it’s a bit fantastical, which I’m notsure it’s a pro or con-given what we know about what’s happening in Iran, thegloomy situation there, I have doubts about that. This is a very well-made film,
but it doesn’t give me any pleasant surprises in terms of the approaches the
director was trying to do.
Chung:

I quite like this one. There is a nice light touch in talking about issues that are quite
serious. I thought it was very funny. As soon as the man untangles his hair, thewoman says, “They’re jealous.” I thought that was so funny. It sucked me into
the film from there. I quite liked the characters, and the police chief is presented
as a villain, but at the same time he seems very human. At one point, he is talking
to his wife on the phone, and it’s clear his wife has a lot of power over him, which
I thought was pretty clever. It is done quite well, and I liked the hopeful natureof the ending as well. It was fantastical, but I felt in this situation it felt as though
they were making a hopeful comment within something that can often seem
hopeless. Something good they did was putting a lot of slices of life happening
in the police station. I don’t know how they filmed it, but that kind of thing isreally hard to pull off, to convincingly show the life happening inside the police
station. That’s not so easy to pull off when you’re doing fiction or evendocumentary because the people are so aware of the camera being there. In thatsense I thought the filmmaker did a great job with that. I quite enjoyed this film.

Fan:

We can move on to the next one, Grey Solar Game.

Yang:

It took me a while to get the whole narrative of the film. It’s very fragmented
because I’m sure they shot with very limited resources so there were neverenough close-ups to get to know these siblings, except for the outside. I’m soglad I saw it on the big screen because it would be very hard to judge on a small
screen. This is a free form film, which I like a lot because you can see how they
really live. It is like a documentary. I know they live in poverty and are just barely
surviving, and they’re being discriminated, but I don’t know their caste, and sofor me it was very hard to really get into their situation. I really like the casualnessof the film though.

Tsui:

I agree with Ruby in terms of how it takes a while to get into the scheme of things
for this abstract film, but the more I watched it on the big screen, the more I was
drawn into the poetics and atmospherics of it. The fact that the filmmaker didn’t
really spell out the particulars of the circumstances faced by the characters, I
think that appealed to me, or else it would be a conventional documentaryspelling out the poverty faced by these characters in rural India, or the COVID
3

situation. These are things we might have learned in other titles, but in this film,
its more about sucking the viewers into this particular situation. It’s beautifully
done, the editing, I find several moments in which the filmmaker pasted together
different images very well. For example, I remember that sequence in which theboy looks at this tower with dark clouds, then it cuts to himself alone, a speck of
a human being in a large field. I find these moments quite captivating. For me, I
do find it quite different. At least the filmmaker was trying to do something
different with an issue that we might have heard before in terms of the problems
or difficulties faced by the rural underclass in India. This is something which I
quite like.
Chung:I was curious what Ruby and Clarence would think about this one, because I quite
enjoyed it, too. I was surprised by it. When I was first watching it, I immediately
just dismissed it. Then as I kept watching it, I just thought, oh, this is actually
really beautiful. And it was beautifully composed and edited. And what stood out
to me with it was that I felt a very deeply humanist portrayal of people. I loved
how all the children seem to always be composed with a trail or a path that isgoing vertical on the frame. And I noticed any time you see money that's always
in a close up and you feel the power of money, you don't see the faces, you justsee like the money that's exchanging hands. And the industrial shots also feelvery jarring. But then you have these moments of nature and of children. And I
felt like the filmmaker was saying something very beautiful about life, but also
about the difficulty of life as well. And I thought it really worked well for me.
The sounds were really good. I wish I saw it on a bigger screen, but I didn't.
Anyway, I thought it was a beautiful film.

Fan:

The next one, The Lighting.

Yang:

It’s an experimental try. It touches on whiteness and blackness, which is a very hot
topic. But I'm not so sure about the approach- The use of technology that part,I’m not sure either. But I like the part when they tried to have the filming of theactor, the feeling, the lighting, the skin color and that mix. I like that a lot because
that's the whole point. How do you light a person with a darker skin? People don't
discuss it because it's so sensitive now. But then once they go into this technology
stuff I immediately pulled back. But the thing is, this is the whole point of him
trying to have technology and then human interacting. So I think it's a very goodtry. Maybe it's not perfect, but I think the discussion about this is very good, likelighting a dark-skinned person.

Tsui:

I find the issue merits a lot of attention, because we always see science andtechnology as being neutral. But this type of activity reveals the inherent racism
ingrained into technology itself. I think the filmmaker actually raised a very4

important and relevant issue to be discussed. But I agree with Ruby that theapproach itself is not exactly perfect in terms of the jumping in between theartificial intelligence, the digital image or the voice over the robotic voices. But
I think that's what he was trying to say because we understand Cantonese, so wesort of understand how it is quite weird, the way the robotic voice was articulating
all these stories in this strange, jarring, stilted Cantonese. But maybe it's the pointthat the filmmaker was trying to make is that, if we were to depend on artificial
intelligence or robots, it will come up with strange results. That is the ingrained
racism in detecting faces. I think the issue itself is quite extraordinary. It’s
something that we need to discuss, but the way that the filmmaker tries to attainthis goal of instigating a debate, there are things that could be done better.
Chung:

I think I felt the same as both of you with it. I felt the issue is a good one, and I
thought it was great that the filmmaker wanted to explore that. I didn't feel as
drawn into it as I wish I had. I'd want to feel the issue rather than think about it
just purely intellectually. Some of the choices he was making, I felt like he wasintentionally wanting to create a little bit of distance with the audience, like it's
not meant to be a film that's easy to watch, I feel. It might be a very subjective
thing, but for me maybe it's a little bit too conceptual for my own personal tastes.
And at the same time, I thought about the issue as I was watching it. So, I thought
that's a positive thing.

Fan:

The next one is I Have No Legs, and I Must Run.

Yang:

The production value and the acting are very good. But the intercutting with thepigs is so direct and it puts me off because you already tell me what to think as
an audience. I back off a little bit immediately. I think it's a well-directed film,
but the editing is a problem. Maybe it's in the direction. It has good intentions,about how China is such a competitive world and that if you are older, you get
eliminated. That, I think, is part of what the director tried to say, but it's just thatit's constantly telling the audience what you should think and how hard they try.
For me, I don't want that to be influenced. It's a highly dramatic film for me, an
opposite of the Indian film. But I rather have the Indian film. Let me just think.
Let me just provoke the feeling. And as a viewer, I like it a lot more when it is
not spelled out for me.

Tsui:

It works really well as an allegory for the real race that we have to go through.
And I agree with Ruby, now that you mention it, the bits about the pig and thesquealing and all that, it's a little bit explicit. But maybe probably it's because ofthat when I watched it, I thought it's a fully formed, self-contained allegory about
the problems or the pressure that we face in a modern capitalistic society. For me,
I think the storytelling was done really well. It's quite taut, I don't see a single
5

spare frame. There is nothing that we could say is unnecessary. The style is pretty
consistent. For me, it works. It’s not exactly the way the filmmakers should do it,
but in terms of pushing the message and also the aesthetics, I do enjoy it.
Chung:

When I think about this film, some of the images instantly come to my mind. I
think there's a close up of one of the actors when he's running in place and his
face is kind of jostling in the frame, or I think about some of the sounds and thelocations also. I think the filmmaker did a great job in capturing the beautiful
images. The sound design is really incredible. Locations are great, theperformances are really strong with this one. As Ruby said, the production design
and the production value are really high. And I'd be curious what they were
working with in terms of budget to pull it off because it's really stunning as a film.
A lot of it worked for me. I felt the emotions the filmmaker was feeling andwanting to express. Of course, it's quite pessimistic and that's okay. Sometimes I
wondered if I was missing some information. I wanted to know a little bit more,
like the characters are always almost a symbol of things rather than actual
characters. It took me a while to figure out that this is purely a story about
symbols in a way. And in that sense, I thought that was interesting. This for me
was one of the better films. I thought it was quite interesting and good to watch.

Fan:

The next one is Little Yellow Flower.

Yang:

I thought this is a really well directed film. It's interesting how it was placed rightafter I Have No Legs, and I Must Run, because they are totally different. AfterI Have No Legs, and I Must Run, this is so quiet. It is more a character study.
And this one has an absolutely beautiful setting. We’re drawn into the characterright away because he's just by himself and doing the sort of work that nobody
wants to do by making woman look beautiful, but he's a guy. That says a lot. And
the set is very nice, the spare setting of a rural house in this beautiful setting.
Gradually we know about him, about him as a child, being abused by the father
and their difficult relationship. And the metaphor of the ants, I guess maybe
people are just like ants and being killed. And then the flowers, the spurt of life
for the kids to recognize the flower. There's a lot of metaphor in there without
spelling it out. I thought this is really well conceived, well directed, well-acted.
An excellent film, in my opinion.

Tsui:

I think this is indeed a very visually impeccable production. The actors did a very
good job in evoking the emotions within themselves and the sets and the
production design. But I find the narrative itself quite bare-bone, it's a bare-bonenarrative. Maybe a bit too large because it could have been a much shorter film.
Not that the length matters, but for me, the story itself is about the schism between
the father and the son. By the first third of the film, we already know that that's
6the theme. It's about reconciliation, which we could see from very afar that it's
going to arrive sooner or later. But it takes quite a while to for all these things tocome together, and it's quite protracted. So for me, it's a bit much to do about too
little. In contrast to I Have No Legs, and I Must Run, there's a lot of meat which
could be skimmed from the production itself.
Chung:

Strangely, I kind of have a similar view with Clarence. I watched I Have No Legs,and I Must Run and then I watched this one, and I wondered why this one didn't
work as well for me as I Have No Legs, and I Must Run because I think there
are some similarities with them. And this might be very subjective and also
somewhat go to just the way that some biases I have when it comes to looking at
people. But I felt like with I Have No Legs, and I Must Run, you have a portraitof people who are in a miserable situation, but it feels as though that is being put
on them by a system or by something else. But with this film, Little Yellow
Flower, I just felt like the filmmaker was often touching upon an ugliness thatcomes out of ourselves. I think that's fine. I don't think human beings are perfectby any means, but it just didn't resonate that well with me. The extent to which
he went into very miserable moments with these characters which is coming outof themselves and when that happens, I wonder if the filmmaker is really noticing
something that's true of humans or is the filmmaker putting that judgment upon
people. Even though there is a more hopeful ending, it didn't work for mesomehow. I didn't feel the film was earning it for me just because of how low thelows were, when he was hitting the high at the end, it was almost unbelievable tome that this kind of reconciliation would happen, so I wasn't able to go there. It
felt like the filmmaker was creating that and pulling that string rather than making
it feel as though these are actual people who came to a feeling of reconciliationby the end. Now, that's all negative, what I just said. On a positive level, I agreewith everything you all said. It's so well composed, it's so well edited. The
locations are great. A lot of the images are very strong and really successful. Even
the job of him photoshopping the women and the way the filmmaker portrayed
that, it was really well done. There's a lot in the film that shows this filmmaker isvery talented, but it was maybe the ethos of the film that was very hard for me to
get into.

Fan:

The next one is Please Hold the Line.

Yang:

It's a very conventional drama, but it's well directed, it's not anything that surprised
me. It’s about a girl coming of age and being tempted and facing a crisis in her
life. But for me, it's very simple. The father is a little silly, and the bad people arereally bad. There's no nuances about the script. For me, it's just very simple story,
quite well directed, but not enough nuances for me.

7Tsui:

Indeed, it's very simple and straightforward. It's about scammers scamming
scammers and scammers being scammed. I don't know what you guys think, but
for me, it’s a simple and straightforward crime thriller. It depends very much on
the twists and turns. Some of the twists and turns are not exactly that logicalbecause at the end, when the daughter, even if she were to put on the mostdifferent Mandarin speaking voice, how could the father not recognize his own
daughter's voice? He is duped into thinking that he won the jackpot, but this is
your daughter. There are several instances in which the plot itself doesn't reallyconvince me that much. I think it could have been better in that sense. Because
it's a melodrama, the narrative should be convincing, but I don't find that very
convincing.

Chung:

Yeah, I agree with that. It took me out of the film for a moment because I wondered
whether I’d recognize my daughter's voice. I thought the writing was quite nice.
I thought as a narrative piece it was written very well with a good twist at the end
and a moral awakening. I like moral awakening films, something about that
resonates with me. Somehow this one worked better for me than Little Yellow
Flower in terms of having a moral awakening by the end. But I do agree there
are some things that weren't working so well in the execution. At the same time,
judging by the level of means that they had, the amount of money they might
have had for this production, I thought I thought they did quite well with thelimitations that the filmmaker and the team had. Also the acting was quite strong.
I thought the call center guys were well casted and there were a lot of small
directing decisions that I respected, and I thought were done pretty well.

Fan:

The next one is Kalaal.

Yang:

That the concept is good. Through a shoe polisher, you don't see their faces, justthe shoes. And you kind of imagine the class and their faces and all the stuff. I
like the concept a lot, and the ending is bittersweet for me. It’s just a very simple
film. It's another entry from India, but this one doesn't have the depth, eventhough at the train station, you see different kinds of people come in and treat thepeople differently. But as a dramatic film, maybe it's too simple. That's my takeon this.

Tsui:

It's quite interesting how the director tackled the very well-trodden issue of classrelations with just shoes and feet and how when you just show feet and shoes,
you actually know a lot more about the people wearing them or the people
owning these feet. Conceptually I think it's quite good. That's why I think it merits
a bit of attention, because from the point of view of looking at whether thesefilmmakers would have the potential to progress, I think this filmmaker does havea bit of a potential in terms of tackling well-trodden issues and in other ways. I
8think this is not the most perfect of films or the most full-fledged of productions,but it's still something that warrants some discussion or merits.
Chung:

I agree with both of you on everything you all said, and I do like that the filmmaker
tried this. It felt like an experiment in a narrative, and I liked that the filmmaker
did it and also pulled it off in many ways, pulled off a story like we can watch
and understand what it's about and what the issues are. And it's probably the team
didn't have as much of a budget as some of the other films in this selection. But
I thought it's quite nice what the filmmaker pulled off.

Fan:

The next film is Graveyard.

Yang:

I like this a lot because it's very simple and it's just about one thing. How do you
deal with your child who died by accident, and reflects Iranian society- women's
right to bury her own baby. What this woman has to go through, all this grief, but
yet she has to do this, and the husband is not around to help. For me, it's a glimpseof the society that people don't discuss in film. And it's a very sad ending,showing how they value life also and how they respect life. I think it's a strong
film.

Tsui:

I appreciate the very different approach the filmmaker used in talking about theissue of women's rights, but not in a social realist way, which we tend to see quite
a lot in films, like, for example, Split Ends. The use of shadows and also thewoman moving about, desperately trying to attain a good burial for her child, andthen failing to do that and running from one place to another. It was done in sortof widescreen, which relegates the woman into one speck of a person in this vastin different landscape. The helplessness and the claustrophobic nature of the story
really grabs me. I think it's a more innovative or different way of looking at theissue of the of suppression of women's rights in Iran, or the suppression of womenin society. This is a film which I preferred more than Split Ends, if I were tochoose between two films from the same culture or the same issue.

Yang:

In the toilet scene, there was something that said a lot about the women. In thatscene where she tries to wash the baby, wash herself, there's a woman putting on
makeup. It's subtly implied she's in some kind of profession. Whenever she
moves from scene to scene, there's a veneer of a different society, and that's subtly
said without forcing it on the viewer. I like that a lot.

Chung:

I might be disagreeing with you both on this one, which we can. Please don't judge
me. But I love the look of it. I thought it looked so good. It was composed sowell. It was very elegant, and the atmosphere was very strong. When I waswatching, what I had a hard time with was that often I would wonder, is the9director a man? I kept thinking that when I was watching it because I felt like theportrayal of this woman, there’s so much of her in her victimhood, that she's avictim. And the whole situation, there was so much morbidity. Split Ends was a
lot stronger for me in or I prefer that approach to what was being said because I
often wonder if films like this really set out to do what they are trying to do. If it
is far too dark, I feel like it only cements the idea that someone is a victim. If awoman is portrayed as a victim, then it becomes harder for women to not be seen
as victims, if that makes sense. I always have that worry when it comes to cinema
and the way we present people of different cultures and people of poorer
countries and also of women, that if we do too much of victimizing of them, thatmaybe we're not actually doing anything to help them. So that's my big gripe with
it. Otherwise, I do find it is interesting that it's a very expressionist sort of film
and not documentary style, as Clarence was saying. And I thought it makes you
think a lot of things, about what it is to be a woman in Iran, like what Ruby wassaying. It's just a personal bias about some political stuff, I guess. And I don't
know if it's fair or not, but that's my point of view.
Tsui:

It’s too miserable, isn't it?

Chung:

That's what I worry. But that's a very subjective personal taste thing. If you all loveit, I totally respect that, too. I think that's great. I don't judge that at all.

Yang:

I think women are still kind of largely victims in Iran, and that's unfortunate.

Chung:

There's a woman director named Makhmalbaf. Have you seen any of her films
from Iran?

Tsui:

You mean Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s daughter?

Chung:

Yeah. I forgot her first name. I thought her films are really striking.

Fan:

The last one is Big Day.

Yang:

I feel the actress is excellent. She's very, very good. It’s about a woman who tries
to conquer her life at a very late age. And I think the script is quite well done. It's
like a mini Taiwanese drama series. It could almost be for television because
everything is set so well and it is really well directed and the production value isvery good. It’s about the relationship of elderly couples, and there are hardly any
films made about this. I like it for that reason. At the end I thought, it's somelodramatic. Everything was just contrived. The last shot for me was a bit too
much.

10

Tsui:

I find it quite melodramatic in a way too. That's exactly what I thought when I waswatching, especially the scene in front of the temple when the camera was going
like this, and I felt like it’s going into TV drama mode. I think it's really welldone. And as you said, the topic of elderly couple falling apart and the inability
to reconcile: these are things which we rarely see these days in our youth-oriented
cultures. But the recollections of death and betrayals and family breakdowns, it'sa bit too conventional. It's not something that we haven't seen before. And theunsurprising contrast between the elderly couple and the young, blissful couple
getting married again is something that has been done quite a few times before.
Among all the titles, this is not exactly the most innovative or independent, eventhough it's really well done. It’s an acting showcase. The two actors are really
good but the narrative from which they emerge is a bit cliché, like it’s made fortelevision.

Chung:

I saw it in a similar way as both of you. I thought the husband was a very strong
actor. I was curious if he's very experienced. I thought, wow, he's really good.
Have you seen him before in anything?

Tsui:

Maybe, but I can't exactly recall where I've seen him. But maybe he pops up in bit
parts here and there. I'm not sure.

Yang:

I think the actress might be quite well known. She looks familiar.

Chung:

I had similar thoughts as I was watching it, it did feel very melodramatic, but at
the same time I enjoyed it as a subject. I tend to like stories about marriage. It
was interesting to watch it. I naturally gravitate to the subject, but I did feel maybe
at times it was melodramatic, but the ending felt at least realistic. I respected that.
I was worried that it would end with them tearing up the divorce papers andkissing and stuff like that. I'm glad it didn't end that way.

Tsui:

I like the way the woman walked away from her ex-husband with her head held
high, not with getting going all teary. It doesn't picture the woman as a victim
and getting all sentimental about the man. So there’s something new in that inthat sense. But in terms of the whole structure, whole narrative is about themarriage falling apart and with the explicitly spelled out dialogue about infidelity,
maybe it's a bit conventional for me.

Fan:

We can proceed to the next part, which is to nominate award winners. Let's see if
any of you have any nominations. We can begin with the Gold Award.

Chung:

Do you think it would be helpful if we just listed how we ranked each film? Ruby
and Clarence, did you do that? Did you rank them? I wonder if there's something11

that shows up pattern wise for all of us.

Tsui:

If we are to give out two awards and a Special Mention, one way of doing it is to
put out top three and then see whether there's some kind of an overlap. Wouldthat be a good way to do it?

Chung:

That sounds good to do the top three at least. I might type it out so that it's faster.
That's how I ranked my top three: Split Ends, Grey Solar Game, I Have No Legs,and I Must Run.

Yang:

Can I have four?

Fan:Sure, this is just for narrowing down the selection.

Yang:

I have Graveyard, Yellow Flower, Split Ends and I Have No Legs, and I Must
Run.

Tsui:

I have Grey Solar Game, I Have No Legs, and I Must Run, and Graveyard. I
would like to recommend The Lighting and Kalaal for Special Mention, butmaybe this is something that we could discuss later.

Fan:

We have one title that has three votes, but sometimes the work with the most votes
doesn't mean that you like it the best. Yet at least this shows that all of you likeit. Also, I don't know if you have any nominations that you really want to push.
Even though the work may only have one or two votes, maybe now is the chancefor you to say a few things about it.

Tsui:

I'll just throw something out for discussion about Special Mention. For the Goldand Silver awards, it's quite obvious these are the winner and the runner up. But
the Special Mention, should we regard it as the third prize, or maybe a Special
Mention would be a completely different concept. For example, a Special
Mention would be for a film which has its flaws, but is something with thepotential for something better and bigger. It’s just that he or she might not haverealized his or her potential with the lack of resources for the production that heor she submitted this time round. I don't know what we should do with thisSpecial Mention.

Chung:

I do like that idea that we are trying to encourage somebody.

Tsui:

That's why that's why I had The Lighting and Kalaal, especially for Kalaal,because obviously it couldn't really compare them in terms of its production
12

values with, for example, I Have No Legs and I Must Run or Grey Solar Gameor Yellow Flower. The filmmaker may manage to come through with somethingwith a very different concept and with better resources, he might be able to dosomething bigger and better. The same goes for The Lighting. The way that hedid it might not be the most perfect. I don't know what you think about the Special
Mention. Should we have some different way of thinking about that?
Chung:

I lean towards Grey Solar Game for Special Mention because it felt like it hadvery limited means. I would say Grey Solar Game may be better than Kalaal for
me.

Yang:

You can tell the filmmaker of Grey Solar Game is more mature because of theediting. Everything works well, every shot, despite all its low resources, you cantell he captured it really well, with the editing and the color. Whereas Kalaal, it'sa good concept, but it's not executed well as a director. I would definitely give
Grey Solar Game a Special Mention or even Silver award because for India, if
they have some resources, it will mean a lot to them. For me, I'd rather give
someone who'd like the encouragement and could do something next.

Chung:

I respect that, I agree with that.

Yang:

For the filmmaker having no resources, maybe they can use the prize money tomake the next film. I think we should judge more the kind of the potential or theintention of the film.

Tsui:

I think it fits with the rest of the awards, because it says that independent spirit is
one of the most important assessment criteria in our competition. The lack ofresources translates as independence in a way. This is probably something that
we have to bear in mind.

Chung:

Maybe.

Yang:

I agree.

Tsui:

Would there be a Special Mention for I Have No Legs, and I Must Run or nothingat all?

Chung:

Maybe. I was just thinking that one gets the Special Mention because we're
respecting that it's well made.

Tsui:

So, Special Mention for I Have No Legs, and I Must Run. We do appreciate thequality of it.
13

Yang:The hard question is the Silver and Gold awards.

Chung:

Ruby, you mentioned that you would be open to Grey Solar Game being the Silver.
I'm curious if you would still feel that way, because that would feel right to me.

Yang:

Okay. And I would nominate Graveyard to be Gold. It’s between that and Split
Ends, I think we can agree to pick one.

Tsui:

I think I'm fine with this because I already picked Grey Solar Game andGraveyard.

Chung:

This one's a little tough for me, but I guess I don't mind it. I think it's a respectablefilm, so I would be happy to go along with you guys on that.

Yang:

I liked Split Ends quite a bit. But Clarence reminded me that it is a moreconventional type of filmmaking. You see it quite a bit, but whereas with
Graveyard, I appreciate it differently. It tells of the Iranian society in different
layers when she goes outside, whereas Split Ends stays in the one location.
Filmmaking wise I think Graveyard is more challenging.

Chung:For the record, I will say I thought the acting was quite good in Graveyard. It felt
very real, every character felt very real. I thought that was really good.

Tsui:

I agree with Isaac because you brought up a very good point about the filmmaker,
this miserabilist approach towards social problems in terms of making the wholestory as tragic as possible. I think this is probably a discussion that we film critics
would have when we’re critically looking at films from other countries. Your
thinking was sort of similar with that, in terms of how filmmakers are always
trying to evoke some kind of a tragedy and miserable circumstances in order togain attention maybe, or to make their films worthier. I don't know whether this is
your concern.

Chung:

I think that is a concern for me. And how that works within Western film festivals
where films like that often get noticed because it confirms a Western view thatsomeone from a culture that is non-Western is living a miserable life in some way.
I've always had that political concern. I made a film in in Rwanda where I thoughta lot about those issues as well. For instance, when I saw Grey Solar Game, you
get the sense of how hard life is, but you also get a profound sense of how goodlife is there. Not to say that means that life isn't hard or we shouldn't do anythingfor people there, but it makes me, as a viewer, want to be doing more for them asa people because I realize they are human beings. There's something very similar
14

about us that I feel. But with Graveyard, I worry if we only look at the people init as victims and not as people. But this is my own personal bias.
Yang:

I'm looking at the artist statement. He says he's just wants to show the issues. That's
what he said, “I really hope that through the film the world would know some of
the Iranian problem through the appropriate lenses.” He didn't say, have pity on
us or something.

Tsui:

I think even though the protagonist in Graveyard is a victim in more ways thanone. But when I watched it, it reminds me of a film noir in terms of how theprotagonist is proactive when I watched it. I’m not sure if it’s paradoxical or
anything. The young woman has tragedy bestowed on her, but at least she's trying
to find a way herself to get out of it by trying to look for her husband, trying to
get her baby buried, and in the end, delivering the corpse in a box to the graveyard
as a very small gesture of protest or subversion. I was thinking whether thiswould elevate her from our usual way of looking at victims or victimhood that
we see in films about women in Iran.

Yang:

I think she's doing something that's important. With Split Ends, everyone knowsthat these two guys are going to be arrested, but the film stopped right at the
happy ending. But it's not realistic because they will go to jail. For me, in
Graveyard the woman is trying do something even though it's out of their control,
but she’s struggling against society. I think she's actively doing something. Forme, this is important. Maybe she doesn't have to, but she's going around to dosomething. It shows her finding her husband at night. What really stayed in mymind is the scene where she runs out and leaves her passport and runs out of theclinic knowing that the man is not going to help, the doctor is not going to help
her. She takes things in her own hands, and that’s so important.

Chung:

I guess there is that element. I wondered what if I was missing anything in termsof Islam, I know the rules around burials are so important and there's so muchcare that goes into a burial. I wondered about that element, too, and wondering if
I'm missing anything when it comes to the decisions that she's making, because
my understanding of Muslim funerals is limited. It raised a lot of questions forme as I watched it. Again, if you both feel it's Gold, I will go along with it and I
would not be upset at all.

Yang:

The story supposedly takes place within 24 hours because that has to be done in
24 hours.

Chung:

I will fully support that.

15

Fan:

I think it's very important to have this kind of discussion. Issac, what you said canbe a reminder to the filmmakers. Is it somethings they can be more sensitive
about? Especially in this situation in the world, not only in Hong Kong, how they
react to the topics and the subject matter that they want to interpret or how toportray the characters in their films. I think this kind of discussion is very
important reminder to all the filmmakers. This is also one of the reasons why wealways insist to have the transcript. It would be quite easy to just give out somemarks and the films with the highest score will be the winner. What's morevaluable is, behind the prizes, we see the same films from different perspectives.
I'm very happy that in today's meeting I can hear lots of professional points ofviews and perspectives and how you see films from different angles. And
although at the end we will only have one Gold award and I think you all agree
that Graveyard will be the Gold and the Silver goes to Grey Solar Game, andSpecial Mention for I Have No Legs, and I Must Run.

(The jurors agreed.)

Asian New Force Category award winners
Gold Award
Graveyard
Ali Daraee (Iran)
Silver Award
Grey Solar Game
Seemonta Halder (India)
Special Mention
I Have No Legs and I Must Run
Li Yue (China)

16