A Filipino-American boxer on a pleasure trip, a prostitute on a mission, a local drug dealer experimenting with time travel, and a social climber all cross paths in Cebu, the beautiful Philippine southern island, in this deliriously imagined occult superhero movie.

Part Chinese Western, part black comedy, part war movie, An Inaccurate Memoir is an action-packed, Peckinpah-esque black comedy about Chinese bandits taking on the Japanese occupation.

An indictment of the Filipino 1% via a decadent high-school party that degenerates into an orgy of sex, violence and class warfare.

A wall-busting, skyscraper demolishing, high-flying martial-arts-action date movie set in Seoul.

A two-fisted, three-footed, 10-knuckled adventure flick, Chan plays pop star turned treasure hunter Asian Hawk, who takes on a Euro-cult of psychotic monks in an effort to rescue an old friend’s kidnapped girlfriend.

Asian Hawk’s quest for a cache of Nazi gold results in a succession of gigantic set pieces and intricate action, including one of cinema’s great car chases, the destruction of an entire hotel, and a final battle in a wind tunnel.

Director Sion Sono (Suicide Club, Cold Fish) shot this art-house film in 1995 over the course of a year and starring members of Tokyo GAGAGA, a performance and activist collective he formed. Shot in Hi-8 format, this massive underground science fiction film focuses on a gang war in Tokyo that erupts when a Chinese gang threatens to take over Koenji Station. Sono shot over 150 hours of footage, but the release was delayed for financial reasons. Now, almost 20 years later, this legendary production has been re-edited to create a stunning work of art.

Meta to the max. Korea’s best actors play themselves (and other actors) in this send-up of carnivorous celebrity culture.

Playing an asthmatic, diabetic Beijing street cop dedicated to busting con artists, journalist-turned-actor Zhang Huiling is the heart of this run-and-gun style film that follows him through several cases—from a family who throw their kids in front of cars to extort money from the drivers, to a low level husband-and-wife money laundering scheme—set on the mean streets of Beijing.

Spies from North and South Korea square off in a gritty, high speed, post-Bourne thriller.

In this hard-knuckled crimer, a corrupt detective teams up with an entrepreneurial meth dealer to bring down the local drug kingpin responsible for the death of the cop’s former partner.

This stylish period thriller starring Hong Kong superstars Nick Tse and Lau Ching-wan pays homage to Holmes and Watson as a 1930s-era detective duo investigate a series of strange murders.

A hyperactive, uber-digital flick about two BFF’s and the abusive daddy who comes between them.

Lovely Lady Ninja Wong Siu Wai returns to China after the death of her father, where she discovers her fiancé has betrayed her and must gather a gang of female warriors to seek vengeance.

In his 101st movie, Chan resurrects his treasure-hunting Asian Hawk character from the Armour of God franchise and delivers an action spectacle that has broken box-office records in China. Reported to be his final “large-scale action picture” CZ kicks off with Chan being hired to steal 12 antique bronze sculptures, representing the animals of the Chinese zodiac, and repatriate them to China. Like a Saturday afternoon matinee, this colorful, kinetic flick is a live action cartoon for grown-ups, offering manic action scenes, hidden islands, pirate gangs, and funky gadgets galore. Cut down by about 20 minutes by Chan himself for the North American market (trust us, you’re not missing ANYTHING), this is the king of the pop-and-lock saying goodbye to the blockbuster movies that made him famous in funtacular style.

Directed by Hong Kong’s King of the Box Office, Wong Jing, this over the top, Die Hard-on-a-boat romp is packed with insane action and ridiculous comedy.

Winner of nine Hong Kong Film Awards, including Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor, and Best New Performer, Cold War was Hong Kong’s 2012 box-office sensation. This cop thriller stars Aaron Kwok and Tony Leung Kar-Fai as two high-ranking officers whose rivalry leads to an intense power struggle over an explosive rescue operation.

Hideo Nakata (who kicked off modern J-horror with The Ring) breathes new life into the genre with what starts out as a bright and cheerful family drama before soon putrefying into something much softer, wetter, and darker. Starring Japanese megastar Atsuko Maeda (lead singer of the enormously popular group, AKB48) as a shy high-schooler who moves into a haunted housing complex with her family and slowly becomes tormented by apparitions and visions of her own tragic past.

Girl power North Korean style! This fun Technicolor tale follows a young miner who pursues her dream of becoming an acrobat.

A deep and dark political thriller set in the royal palace with enough court intrigue and sex to fuel an entire season of Game of Thrones.

A serial killer waits until the statute of limitations expires, then writes a book confessing his crimes in this slam-bang summer blockbuster.

This take-no-prisoners, semi-experimental exploitation flick is about three Thai hipsters in NYC and the drug dealer who tortures them on New Year’s Eve.

A master and his student visit a mountain to practice pansori (a genre of traditional Korean music) following a music competition that left the student disappointed in his performance.

Megastar Fan Bingbing plays a woman who kills her husband’s mistress then slowly goes insane while running from the cops.

When Satoko and Kanya's restaurant burns to the ground, the couple decides to start exploiting Satoko's talent for wooing women and begin promising matrimony to lonely ladies before scamming them out of all their cash. As they work their way through Japan's lonely-hearts population events begin to take a toll on their marriage and their souls.

Hong Kong’s master filmmaker Johnnie To has crafted a hardcore, boundary-pushing police thriller that’s the most savagely subversive film ever made in mainland China.

Filmed at the peak of Chan’s prime, this transcendent pairing of classic Shaw Brothers director Lau Kar-leung and Jackie Chan resulted in what many claim to be the greatest martial arts film ever made.

Join NYAFF for a 40th anniversary screening of Bruce Lee’s legendary martial arts crossover hit, preceded by a conversation on the relationship between Kung Fu movies and early Hip Hop.

A scandalicious hit about the romance between a 17-year old girl and a 70-year-old man, A Muse earned its lead actress six awards for her performance.

The searing story of a career woman whose hard-headed race to the top destroys her family, forcing her to start over.

This light and frothy romantic comedy is set in the fabulous world of the 60s Taiwanese movie industry. Special appearance: Godzilla!

A young girl is stalked by a killer refrigerator that keeps her milk cold, her vegetables crisp, and her friends dead.

Hailed as the Thai Goodfellas, this period crime epic is stylish, slick, and powerfully acted.

A surprisingly personal and revealing documentary about the concert battle between the legendary Cantopop band Grasshopper and hip hop duo Softhard.

Hong Kong’s local comedic tradition continues in this quirky post-Vulgaria, three-part omnibus.

A vicious, candy-colored fashionista horror drama about a Lady Gaga-esque singer and actress whose plastic surgery enhancements are are slowly turning as black and rotten as bruised fruit.

Kyosuke is the star of his high school martial arts club, but when he indulges in his passion for wearing women's underwear he becomes the panty-masked superhero Hentai Kamen. Based on a wildly popular manga series, Hentai Kamen may not be the hero we deserve, but he's the hero we need.

Half romcom, half satire of the Korean film industry, this wacky and charming tale follows an overworked woman's attempt to improve her relationship with men using a self-help video.

Toshiaki Toyoda has been an NYAFF favorite with flicks like his samurai dream, Blood of Rebirth, and his Unabomber biopic Monster's Club, but now he returns to his pulp roots to deliver a sunbaked gangster flick about a cute young cult leader who hides from the press after a car wreck on an isolated island with only his three bodyguards for company.

A slyly subversive send-up of current craze for Ip Man movies, Herman Yau’s action flick is also a myth-busting celebration of Hong Kong’s working class riots and strikes of the 1960s.

Somewhere between Magritte, Kafka, Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman, Satoshi Miki's (Adrift in Tokyo) surrealist tale of Hitoshi, a young electronics store clerk with a case of multiple personality disorder (played by pop star Kazuya Kamenashi of the band Kat-Tun) boldly goes where no black comedy has gone before. After picking up a cellphone left behind by a customer, he undertakes a popular scam: he calls the person's mother and with the open-sesame magic formula "It's me! It's me!" poses as her son, easily talking the mom into transferring cash to his own depleted bank account.

Following a screening, a festival jury convenes to discuss the film, but find themselves at odds as disagreements arise and passions run high.

This film festival fave follows a kid lost in the correctional system and the mom who ditched him, both looking for a new life.

When high school star athlete and all-around golden boy Kirishima drops out of the volleyball team and disappears, his fellow students try to figure out what his motivations and whereabouts could be, not to mention uncomfortably taking stock of their own place in the school's social structure. A careful examination of all the power struggles, class warfare, social angst, and drama of an entire high school as seen through the lens of Kirishima's absence.

In this bloody rape-revenge flick from one of Taiwan’s only female exploitation directors, a reporter goes eye-for-an-eye on her attackers, killing them by bear trap, knife, blowtorch, and meat hook.

From the director of City of Life and Death comes this hallucinatory history of the first Chinese Dynasty as told by the dying emperor.

Chow Yun-fat plays a real-life 1920s Shanghai gangster facing the murderous plots of the secret service.

This stripped down Ip Man movie features Hong Kong’s best martial artists—Bruce Leung, Sammo Hung, Yuen Biao, and Ip Man’s son, Ip Chun—and will leave you bruised, battered, and begging for more.

Japan’s wildest director returns to horror with this flick about a beloved high school teacher with a dark secret past and homicidal urges that can’t be contained.

The wildest ninja flick you’ll ever see, A Life of Ninja features mud fights, professional wrestling, icicle knives, naked ladies, and plenty of freaky kung fu.

A heartbreaking and hilarious escapade spotlighting Chan’s camera-ready charisma and his best script ever, this is the film in which Chan finally proved he’s a real actor, not just an action star.

If you ask Jackie Chan which movie he’s most proud of directing, he always names this shimmering 1920s gangster fantasia, a remake of Frank Capra’s Lady for a Day set in a storybook Hong Kong that recalls Damon Runyon’s New York.

The acclaimed arthouse director’s first film after being blacklisted in China is a murder mystery wrapped in love triangle wrapped in an existential crisis.

This true crime thriller and surprise box office hit kicked off Taiwan’s “Black Movie” wave of exploitation outrageousness, which saw 117 hard-hitting flicks hit screens between 1979 and 1983.

This is one of the key breakout films in the Taiwanese Black Movie cycle. Adapted from the scar literature of Mainland China (a late 70’s genre concerning political suffering under the Cultural Revolution), the movie is a politically charged film told mostly in flash backs about Li-fang (Luk Siu-fan) who is arrested after Hai-nan (Richard Cui), the son of an official, is stabbed in the street. The film then delves into the trauma of Li-fang as her physical and mental scars are revealed one by one during her interrogation.

Based on a book that was banned in the mainland, and infused with a serious political message, the producers and distributor were so enamored with Luk Siu-fan and her ability to stab herself while simultaneously showing off her assets, that they marketed the film around her sexiness. Unfortunately the poster where she looks like she just stepped out of the shower is nowhere to be found in this decidedly anti-communist look at the inner political workings of the Cultural Revolution and the women it destroyed. Launched into the public consciousness with this sexy image, Luk Siu-fan went on to star in many female revenge films such as The Lady Avenger and Exposed to Danger.

Gritty, straight forward, and concerned with how the state has betrayed the youths that drove the revolution forward, Wang Chu-chin’s film is perhaps one of the most social realist films of the Black Movie cycle. Hardly subtle, the political commentary is a bit on the nose, but this helps audiences not familiar with the intricacies of the political situation at the time. Well shot, well acted, and you can see why Liu Hsiao-fen was groomed for Black Movie stardom.

Fresh off from directing Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Last Stand, Kim Jee-woon tries his hand at romantic comedy in this tale of a hapless young man who stumbles through a number of terrible blind dates before finding someone who might be his Mrs. Right.

From one Korea’s only female directors comes this glittering fairy tale about a guy with two heads trying to fall in love.

A breathless adrenaline rush full of twisted bumpers and broken ribs, Police Story is viewed by many as Chan’s greatest achievement and a milestone in the Hong Kong canon.

As dark and sobering as Police Story was light and playful, this sequel is all about the consequences of action. Chan begins the film demoted to traffic duty after his mall-destroying misadventures in Part One. He finds himself unable to protect his girlfriend (Maggie Cheung) from danger, he can’t track down the bad guys to fight them, and his archenemies are more interested in their cancer treatments than in revenge. The spectacular stunts and killer set-pieces are still there—including a climactic duel with a deaf-mute bomber set in a fireworks-laced warehouse—but Police Story 2 feels more like a deconstruction of the cop thriller than anything else Chan’s ever made.

Teaming up with his reliable collaborator Stanley Tong, Chan turned in this stunning capper to his Police Story trilogy and re-launched the career of Michelle Yeoh in the process.

The movie that transformed Chan from a martial arts star into a director of transcendent physical comedy, Project A is spiced with outrageous stunts, including a jaw-dropping bicycle chase and a 50-foot fall from a clock tower inspired by Safety Last!

A meticulously crafted Swiss watch of mistaken identities, espionage, and colonial intrigue, Project A 2 may be Chan’s greatest directorial accomplishment, weaving together groundbreaking stunts with extraordinary non-action filmmaking.

A ragingly sexy, grittily realistic love triangle film about a reality TV star trying to make bank and get some nookie.

Jay Chou (Initial D, Michel Gondry's Green Hornet) is one of the most famous pop stars in Asia. The Rooftop, marking Cho's second film as director, following Secret (2007), is a romance combining elements of martial arts and special effects in a musical extravaganza. It stars Chou alongside Eric Tsang, Wand Xueqi and Alan Ko in a story set in a fantasy world comprised of two distinctly contrasting communities and lifestyles. One group lives on rooftops, where they dance and sing every day, passing their days without a care in the world, while below them are the people living under the rooftops, who possess more money and power.

This live-action adaptation of the wildly popular manga follows a Meiji era assassin who leaves his life behind to become a protector of the common man.

Three North Korean sleeper agents hiding in the South are slated for termination in this wild action-comedy based on the popular webtoon series "Covertness."

It all began with this kung fu comedy about a bullied young man working as a janitor at a martial arts school who learns to fight back against his tormentors using a technique known as "Snake’s Fist."

Yonosuke arrives at university in the late 80's when Japan was booming and the economy was raining cash. Hopelessly naive, and hopelessly self-confident, he comes to the big city and annoys everyone. But slowly he finds a group of friends and then the movie jumps forward 20 years and then...to tell any more would ruin the surprise, but this is a heartfelt movie that sings the song of the seeming loser.

A long lost era of filmmaking was preserved and rediscovered by this documentary, the result of a labor of love that began when the director found a stack of discarded VHS tapes in the Taiwan Film Archive.

In this three-part horror omnibus based on Lilian Lee’s best-selling novel series, a young girl pays a veteran hitter to curse four villains, leading to gruesome deaths and the revelation of a chilling secret.

"An Epic Bath Extravaganza!" Based on a manga series that's sold 5 million copies and spawned a TV show, it's all about an ancient Roman bath designer who time travels to contemporary Japan and finds new inspiration in Japan's modern day public baths. Five million very clean Japanese people can't be wrong.

This sprawling corruption epic is the kind of movie Sidney Lumet would have made if he had been Korean.

Korea’s other big hit this year is a hyper-realistic romantic comedy about a warring couple who work for the same company.

A timid man’s mundane life takes a turn when he is visited by a vision of the Virgin Mary.

The freaky sequel to festival hit Funky Forest: The First Contact, Variety calls it the “weirdest movie of the year.” Like Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch, only much funnier.

A high-octane, super-stylized, live-action cartoon of a romantic comedy about a guy looking for his lost love in Taipei’s cram school district.

Another of Taiwan’s mondo revenge movies from the early 80s, this brutal exploitation shocker features a gentle woman who turns into a bloodthirsty killer, bent on revenge against those who wronged her.

A special July 4 screening of the first two movies in Hong Kong’s landmark hit crime series—shot-on-the-run flicks that captured lightning in a bottle and became cultural sensations.

Opening on a high-stakes lion dance competition and closing on a ferocious showdown between Chan and Hwang, The Young Master found Chan exploring the thin line between kung fu as performance and as life-or-death combat.