Cinema: Neues Off | Rollberg Kino | Colosseum Filmtheater
Welcome to the fourth edition of NewGen Film Festival! This year, we handpicked 8 feature films and 22 short films to celebrate emerging cinematic talents and showcase the diversity of the Asian cinema landscape. Enjoy!
Adored by his grandmother, Ah-ha shares his childhood with siblings while his father, who had planned to return to China, dies in a foreign land. As a teenager, he gets caught up in street fights and nurtures a crush on a local girl. When illness strikes his family, he faces death for the first time, struggling to balance filial duties with the harshness of street life. Director HOU Hsiao-hsien's poetic New Cinema style transforms this autobiographical tale into a timeless reflection of an era.
Saina tries to make ends meet as a herdsman in the wintery steppes of Inner Mongolia. While performing at night in breathtaking horseback shows, he by day takes care of his family’s horses while juggling a grumpy father and his dysfunctional relationship with his ex-wife and kid. Unlike the majestic cavalryman he portrays in the show, Saina must discover how the world he grew up in has dramatically changed. An intimate portrait about masculinity in crisis from a female perspective.
Arum’s parents belong to the pivotal generation that led South Korea’s democratization through the student movements of the 1980s. Eager to pass on a better world to their daughter, her father chose the path of a public servant, while her mother became a feminist activist. Inspired by their commitment to building a better Korea, Arum embraced the idea of becoming a patriotic girl. But at the age of 18, Arum witnessed the Sewol ferry disaster—a national tragedy that claimed countless lives due to systemic failures. As she uncovered her father's involvement in the aftermath, Arum began to question the democracy her parents' generation had fought so ardently to establish. Through the lens of her family’s journey, Arum delves into the political history of South Korea, grappling with the role her own generation must assume.
Tam, a diligent wedding venue staffer, discovers her husband’s affair on live TV. Rather than confronting him, she enlists a powerful spell master to win back his love. Tam’s daughter, Ha, pours her frustration into vivid fantasies of a brighter future abroad. Meanwhile, a mysterious House Spirit, visible only to the women, lurks beneath their cracked, leaky ceiling.
Kae Suzuki (Masami Nagasawa) loses her 5-year-old daughter, Mei, and lives with her husband, Tadahiko (Koji Seto).
Overcome with grief, Kae cherishes a lovely doll she finds at a flea market that closely resembles Mei, which helps her regain her spirit.
Later, a new daughter, Maya, is born to Kae and Tadahiko, and the couple’s attention shifts away from the doll. However, when Maya turns five and begins playing with the doll, strange incidents start to occur within the family one after another.
Kae tries desperately to get rid of the doll, but no matter how many times she throws it away, it keeps coming back.
Why does this doll always return...?
What secret lies hidden within the doll? And what is the shocking truth that will finally be revealed!?
On the verge of losing his wife, Mo is haunted by strange nightmares, witnessed by his young daughter, Fen. As peculiar sounds escape him in his sleep, Mo struggles to suppress his emotions and confront the fear that grips him, trying to break free from the silent weight of his anguish.
THE BLACK DOG transforms early life into an allegorical encounter with loss, the spectral animal embodying both companionship and dread.
A STORY ABOUT XIAOXIAN invokes Tibetian mysticism, naturalism and family destiny, showing how a young girl’s path is scripted by spiritual inheritance, and the reglious connotation of love.
A divine young man, Jin Feng, descends to the mortal world to redeem his mother by capturing the 28 star spirits. He crosses paths with Fanning, a mortal girl seeking to ascend to the divine world to find her mother. Though they start off as rivals, they eventually team up to complete their mission, only to uncover a long-hidden mysterious truth.
Shy and imaginative eight-year-old Xuan struggles to find the perfect outfit for her school's upcoming Children's Day celebration while adjusting to a turbulent home life and an unlikely new friendship at school.
CHILDREN’S DAY traces this from the perspective of a child whose wish for a perfect celebration collides with the fractures of family, exposing how even the most innocent hopes are entangled with the weight of expectation and neglect.
ORLO WITH KARMA reframes longing not as a search for validation, but as the affirmation of presence. Its heroine—cycling through the alleyways of Lhasa, hip-hop inflected, agile and uncontainable—embodies a freedom that resists symbolic reduction. She is local yet future-oriented, gendered yet self-defining, existing not as a representation but as a lived force. Her very being unsettles the desire to categorize, reminding us that the most radical longing may lie in simply existing otherwise.
Manila at night is teeming with possibility – of danger but also of tenderness. UNO meets distressed teenager ZION in a bus terminal and bonds in their brief encounter. Two years later, they meet again as hustlers booked by the same client. The night turns sour when Uno’s friend, Miguelito is found overdosed by his client. Zion reveals to Uno and his buddies, Bayani and Rush that before he passed away, Miguelito’s dying wish: to take him home. Together, they lug around Miguelito’s body around the city to the countryside, via buses and highways. With each step, the conclusion becomes clearer: that there is no place in the world for these kids, except with each other. Despite their differences, they have become forged into a singular pack of brothers.
AFTER ALL closes the programme in a quieter register: a tentative work of mourning and slow repair, suggesting that what lingers may also open toward renewal.
SO CLOSE, SO BEAUTIFUL registers the city as a terrain of distance—geographic, classed, emotional—where youthful longing becomes a fraught pilgrimage.
This animated short film unit showcases a wide and diverse range of works from emerging young directors across Asia. The selection explores themes from the delicate portrayal of family and parent-child relationships and profound reflections on war, to pioneering explorations imbued with experimental, fantastical, and realistic sensibilities. The unit aims to highlight the most unique and cutting-edge expressions from Asia's new generation of animation creators.
This animated short film unit showcases a wide and diverse range of works from emerging young directors across Asia. The selection explores themes from the delicate portrayal of family and parent-child relationships and profound reflections on war, to pioneering explorations imbued with experimental, fantastical, and realistic sensibilities. The unit aims to highlight the most unique and cutting-edge expressions from Asia's new generation of animation creators.
In a near-future Tokyo where the threat of a catastrophic earthquake pervades daily life, two rabble-rousing best friends are about to graduate high school. One night, they pull a consequential prank on their Principal, which leads to a surveillance system being installed in their school. Stuck between the oppressive security system and a darkening national political situation, the two respond in contrasting ways, leading them to confront differences they never had to face before.