Malaysian director Woo Ming Jin’s local horror Indera will open the Malaysia International Film Festival (MIFFEST), which will be closed by two Hong Kong features, Ho Miu Ki’s Love Lies and Nick Cheung’s Peg O’ My Heart.
The 7th edition of MIFFEST will take place in Malaysia’s capital of Kuala Lumpur from July 21-28. It will pay tribute to Japanese auteur Hirokazu Kore-eda and celebrated Indonesian actress Christine Hakim with lifetime achievement awards, as well as honour Hong Kong actor-director Cheung with an award for excellent achievement in film.
In a press conference held yesterday (June 24), MIFFEST founder Joanne Goh unveiled a bumper line-up of 50 films from over 30 countries, its biggest so far, including nine titles in contention for the Malaysia Golden Global Awards.
These include the world premiere of Hoby Zhang’s Within A Budding Grove from Hong Kong, the Asian premiere of Betania by Marcelo Botta from Brazil and Ukraine-Germany-Slovakia-Czech Republic production The Editorial Office by Roman Bondarchuk, and Malaysian drama Abang Adik, which won the best actor prize at Taiwan’s Golden Horse Awards and became a sleeper hit at the box office there.
The competition jury will be chaired by Indian director-actress Suhasini Maniratnam. The awards night will be held at Auditorium Seri Angkasa on July 27 and broadcast live on local TV.
This year, the festival will introduce two new sections to expand its scope. Neon is dedicated to discovering unique voices, with eight films such as All The Long Nights by Sho Miyake, Blesser by Lee Sang-cheol and the Asian premiere of The Woman Who Cries by George Walker Torres.
The other new section Afterdark spotlights genre-defying films such as A24’s I Saw The TV Glow by Jane Schoenbrun and the Asian premiere of Hood Witch by Saïd Belktibia and Radim Špaček’s Forest Killer.
Opening film Indera will have its world premiere at Mad MaxX section of the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BIFAN) in South Korea in early July. Director Woo’s previous films 2009’s Woman On Fire Looks For Water, which premiered at Venice’s Horizons, and 2022’s Stone Turtle, which premiered at Locarno’s international competition, will also be screened at MIFFEST at an open-air cinema dedicated to homegrown independent filmmakers.
The festival will also honour the memory of the late Malaysian director Yasmin Ahmad with a retrospective of her feature films Muallaf and Gubra and a collection of her TV commercials that she directed for advertising agency Leo Burnett.
7th MIFFEST Golden Global Awards nominees
Abang Adik (Malaysia-Taiwan)
Dir. Jin Ong
Betania (Brazil)
Dir. Marcelo Botta
Every You Every Me (Germany-Spain)
Dir Michael Fetter Nathansky
In the Land of Brothers (France-Iran-Netherlands)
Dirs. Alireza Ghasemi, Raha Amirfazli
Rapture (India-China-Switzerland-Qatar-Netherlands)
Dir. Dominic Sangma
Sujo (Mexico-US-France)
Dirs. Astrid Rondero, Fernanda Valadez
The Editorial Office (Ukraine-Germany-Slovakia-Czech Republic)
Dir. Roman Bondarchuk
The Great Phuket (Hong Kong-France-Germany-Belgium)
Dir. Liu Yaonan
Within a Budding Grove (Hong Kong)
Dir. Hoby Zhang
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