Japanese triumph at FEFF 26:
Takano Tofu wins the Golden Mulberry
and Confetti the Silver Mulberry!
On the third step of the podium we find instead
l’hongkonghese Time Still Turns the Pages.
The 2024 edition closes with three record numbers:
65 thousand spectators, 3000 guests and 1700 accredited.
It’s the first time I’ve come to the Far East Film Festival, a very big and very important event for us Asian filmmakers. You know: it’s rare today to find 1200 people attending a film screening. It is rare all over the world. And I am deeply moved to see such a full room, without empty spaces, and to see how much you love our works! I will return here again to the Teatro Nuovo in Udine, a beautiful city, because you have really moved me…”.
In Zhang Yimou’s words there is not only happiness for a welcome full of enthusiasm and for an art, cinema, which is starting to fly again: there is the very meaning of the Far East Film Festival. A long journey, free and restless, into the popular soul of Asia. A long love story which, since 1999, has never stopped creating connections between East and West.
Confirming the fact that cinema is starting to fly again, FEFF 26 brought 79 films to Udine (12 world premieres, 22 international, 23 European, 19 Italian), 228 guests of honor (including, of course, the legendary Zhang Yimou, awarded the Golden Mulberry for Lifetime Achievement and protagonist of a memorable masterclass) and 65 thousand spectators. And the public itself, according to a tradition that dates back to FEFF 01, also decided this year’s podium with voting cards.
Japan dominated the 2024 Audience Awards, triumphing with Mihara Mitsuhiro’s touching Takano Tofu (Golden Mulberry) and placing Fujita Naoya’s very tender Confetti in second place (Silver Mulberry). Third place went to one of the cinematic highlights of the season: Time Still Turns the Pages by Hong Kong director Nick Cheuk (Crystal Mulberry). Japan also made sparks on the front of the accredited Black Dragon (which crowned Shiraishi Kazuya’s samurai movie Bushido) and the MYmovies community (which crowned Takano Tofu).
The jurors of the First Works section (Anthony Chen, Edouard Waintrop, Matsuzaki Kaoru) then awarded the White Mulberry to the romance of the South Korean Mimang by Kim Tae-yang while the Mulberry for Best Screenplay went to the action comedy Citizen of a Kind by South Korean director Park Young-ju (some of the jurors of the “Sergio Amidei” international screenplay award from Gorizia decided: Massimo Gaudioso, Marco Risi, Doriana Leondeff and Francesco Munzi).
More than 3000 guests were placed in the various accommodation facilities of the city by FEFF 26, a record number, and the accreditation account also recorded a record number: 1700, i.e. 25% more than in 2023. Enthusiasts, journalists, experts, professionals, simply “curious” and, it should be underlined, 130 university cinema students (Italy, United Kingdom, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Singapore), demonstrating how high the attention threshold was even by the younger Fareastians.
Over 200 professionals arrived from all over Europe for the Focus Asia industry sessions and around 15 thousand people took part in the FEFF Events, spread across the center of Udine. The online FEFF, streaming on the MYmovies ONE platform, finally recorded 8,775 attendees from 200 Italian municipalities. The first city for online users was Milan, followed by Rome and Turin. The most watched films in streaming were the Alienoid saga (with 1500 hours of viewing) and Takano Tofu (with 624 hours of viewing).
Now all that remains is to mark the dates of the next edition in your calendar, when the Far East Film Festival will reach its twenty-seventh milestone: appointment in Udine from 24 April to 2 May 2025!