“I hope everyone who sees ‘Yangzi’s Confusion’ cares about the children”

Barcelona, ​​24 October (EFE).- The Chinese director Li Jue, who tomorrow Wednesday will open the eleventh edition of the Barcelona/AFFBCN Asian Film Festival with her debut film, “Yangzi’s Confusion”, hopes that everyone who sees the film, which she shot in just 27 days, “they worry about the children.

This film tells the story of Yangzi, a ten-year-old girl who discovers in her mother’s diary that she was abandoned by her mother when she was very young, causing the communication between the two to become conflicted from that moment on.

As Meihui, Yangzi’s mother, confesses all the hardships she has suffered in her life and her true feelings, the gap between them will begin to close and a new relationship will be forged.

The filmmaker, who is already thinking about new projects, has emphasized the importance that “relationships and characters” have in film for her, highlighting that this independent film, in this case, “is about women and families in Asia.”

In the presentation of the edition, the director of AFFBCN 2023, Menene Gras, argued that it is “important to support young filmmakers”, in a year in which the festival is committed to making visible the works of young filmmakers and writers. or unknown.

Gras has emphasized that the film by the young Chinese filmmaker, who is also the author of the script, offers a portrait of today’s urban China.

The festival, a benchmark for Asian auteur cinema, which runs until November 5, will also dedicate a retrospective to the acclaimed Chinese director Wang Chao, who will be in Barcelona at the same time as the screening of the eight most relevant films in his film career.

AFFBCN will offer a program that includes more than a hundred films from 25 countries in Asia and the Pacific with the aim of bringing the public closer to daily life in this vast region of the world, from Iran to the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, as well as Afghanistan, India , Pakistan, Bangladesh or Sri Lanka.

The problems and conflicts of its people, the daily experiences and feelings and the feeling of belonging to a certain territory fill the cinematic proposal in this edition with content, according to the organizers.

“This year we have controversial and controversial films, that’s really what the festival is supposed to do: show so the public can have their say,” Gras said.

The Asian Film Festival will dedicate special attention to Chinese cinematography, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Spain, with twenty films programmed.

The locations of the in-person programming of the festival will be Cines Girona, CaixaFòrum, Phenomena, Filmoteca de Catalunya, Zumzeig and Manifesta 15 in Barcelona, ​​while the online programming can be seen on the Filmin platform and in betéve.

A total of fifteen awards will be presented: for Best Film, Best Director and Best Screenplay for each of the competing sections.

As a novelty, the festival wants to promote new talents with the incorporation of a new notice open to new or unknown authors, where ten films will be screened.

The film “The Royal Hotel”, from 2023, by Australian Kitty Green, closes this eleventh edition, which seeks to show the most “representative” of recent experimental and independent cinema from the Asian continent, in Gra’s words.

The programming therefore includes “productions that respond both to the interest of an audience familiar with these film recordings and to the interest of those who want to get started in a not-so-new cinema, whose diversity primarily responds to the different narratives, it reveals.” EFE

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