Abra is one of the Philippines' most successful rappers. Starting out as a member of LDP (Lyrically Deranged Poets) he then entered the Fliptop Battle League at its 2010 inception. He quickly proved his mettle by trouncing opponents with improvised insults in the African-American tradition of ‘the dozens.’ He rose to popularity through videos on YouTube, most notably his breakthrough Gayuma in which he is tricked into falling in love with a transgender woman via a love potion; it has been viewed 47 million times. His leading role in Respeto secured him Best Actor at the Philippines' Oscars in mid-June.

Ahn Jae-hong began his career in short films. A student of Hong Sang-soo, he was cast in The Day He Arrives and has since appeared in several of the auteur’s films. After a pivotal role in The Sunshine Boys (2012) Ahn’s breakthrough came in the independent sleeper comedy The King of Jokgu (2013). This led to a popular turn on the TV series The Reply. A master of comedy with a maverick edge, Ahn has acted in blockbusters such as Fabricated City (NYAFF 2017) while also pursuing more artistic endeavors such as his role as the elusive boyfriend in Microhabitat.

After spending his teenage years in New Zealand, where he was often mistaken for a Maori, Javanese Ario Bayu studied at London's Globe Theatre when he secured one of 20 scholarships out of 4500 applicants. After a year of business studies in New Zealand, he returned to Jakarta in 2004. His breakthrough role was as police detective Eros in Joko Anwar’s neo-noir Dead Time (2007). Comfortable acting in both English and Indonesian, and boasting a strong physical presence, he has become the international face of Indonesian cinema with roles in The Forbidden Door, Macabre and Buffalo Boys.

Antony Chan is the drummer of legendary Hong Kong teen-idol band The Wynners, formed in 1973 together with Alan Tam, Kenny Bee, Bennett Pang and Danny Yip. In the 1980s, he formed Go Go Films and produced and directed hit comedies, including A Fishy Story (1989) starring Maggie Cheung as an aspiring actress and former bandmate Bee as her taxi driver neighbor. The romantic comedy proved a creative turning point for Cheung, winning her Best Actress at the Hong Kong Film Awards. After more than two-and-a-half decades, House of the Rising Sons marks Chan's return to the directing chair.

After graduating with a degree in screenwriting from the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, Sunny Chan worked as creative director and coordinator at Brilliant Idea Group and Singing Horse Productions for producer Joe Ma. His screenplay of Horror Hotline... Big Head Monster (2001) helped launch the career of former indie director Soi Cheang. His versatilitiy as a writer was also on display in hit comedies Dummy Mommy, Without a Baby (2001) and Love Undercover (2002), which launched the movie career of singer Miram Yeung (NYAFF Star Asia Awardee, 2016). He makes his directorial debut with Men on the Dragon.

Anne Curtis moved from Australia to her mother's native Philippines when she was 12-years-old. After being scouted for a child beauty pageant, she made her acting debut as Princess Dahlia in fantasy Magic Kingdom (1997), co-written by Erik Matti. After learning Filipino, her acting career took off in the mid-2000s when she headlined her first TV-series. In 2011, romance No Other Woman won her Best Actress at the FAMAS Awards as well as breaking records as the Philippines' highest grossing film. 2018 marks the latest turning point in her career with roles in Irene Villamor's Sid & Aya and Matti's BuyBust.

After posting cover songs on social media, Gena De Souza was discovered by Classy Records who featured her track Shy on a compilation album. After appearing on GMM Grammy's MBO The Audition, she signed a recording contract with MBO. De Souza, who is of Thai and Portuguese descent, has since starred in several TV series while releasing a series of singles and compilation tracks. In her movie debut Premika, she sports a moe-style Japanese school uniform whilst wielding a bloody axe and (bloody) microphone with equal aplomb. She is currently studying advertising at Bangkok University’s Faculty of Communication Arts.

Born in Weihai in China's eastern Shandong province, Dong Yue graduated from the Beijing Film Academy and then earned his master’s degree in photography. He worked as a cinematographer on several films, including Wang Zhi's The Journey Away (2009), but primarily honed his craft in the field of advertising. For his directorial debut The Looming Storm, he chose to write a thriller set in an industrial town in 1997 to focus on the "psychological status of ordinary people" when Chinese society was going through extraordinary change. In March, Dong won Best New Director at the Asian Film Awards for his debut.

Emoto Tasuku, who comes from a family of actors, debuted at the age of 16 in Kuroki Kazuo's lyrical drama A Boy’s Summer in 1945, in which he played the director in his youth suffering survivors' guilt in the last days of the Pacific War. His naturalistic performance won him Kinema Junpo's highly-regarded Best Newcomer Award. He has since appeared in more than 50 feature films, countless TV shows and many stage productions. He has worked with Yukisada Isao, Wakamatsu Koji and Kudo Kankuro. Dynamite Graffiti showcases him in an explosive lead performance as the legendary erotica entrepreneur Suei Akira.

Harada Masato studied filmmaking in London and worked as a film critic in Hollywood before he made his 1979 directorial debut Goodbye Flickmania, an homage to Howard Hawks. He made several films in the US including sci-fi cult hit Gunhed (1989) and Painted Desert (1993) before returning to Japan to make Kamikaze Taxi (1994), his first collaboration with Yakusho Koji and his first modern classic. He is a master storyteller in the tradition of Kurosawa Akira who brings an always sharp blade to his explorations of history, social injustice, political corruption, and the weak foundations of Japanese democracy.

Jang Joon-hwan made his directorial debut with 2001 Imagine, an intriguing 1994 short film about a factory worker who thinks he is John Lennon reincarnate. His first feature was the cult science fiction film Save the Green Planet! (2003). After making short films Hair (2004) and Love for Sale (2010), he returned to feature films one decade later with dark revenge thriller Hwayi: A Monster Boy (2013) featuring Kim Yoon-seok (NYAFF Star Asia 2018). Jang reunites with Kim for his third feature 1987: When the Day Comes in a politically charged thriller about the beginnings of democracy in South Korea.

South Korean actress, producer, director and screenwriter Jeon Go-woon graduated from Konkuk University and majored in directing at Korea National University of Arts. She directed several short films including Bad Scene and the prize-winning Too Bitter to Love. In 2013 she founded the independent production company Gwanghwamun Cinema with a group of young filmmakers where she produced Sunshine Boys, sleeper hit sports comedy The King of Jokgu and The Queen of Crime, in which she also acts. Microhabitat marks her first feature as director. Despite its low budget it is an impressively polished film with original storytelling and outstanding mise-en-scene.

A graduate of the Korea National University of Arts, Jeong Ga-young directed several short films before she self-financed her first feature, the black-and-white Bitch on the Beach (2016), in which she also played the titular and confrontational lead. Her sophomore film Hit the Night, screening at NYAFF, won her the Vision-Director’s Award at the Busan International Film Festival. While her simple style deliberately recalls the work of Hong Sangsoo, Jeong’s unique recipe - rebellious, smart, sexually frank and mildly melancholic with a spicy dash of feminism – proves her an exciting new voice to watch in South Korean cinema.

Jiang Jiachen hails from Shenyang in northeast China where he graduated from the LuXun Academy of Fine Arts. He directed the short films The Dog Days (2004) and The Thieves (2005). In 2016, he was selected as one of 15 candidates for the China Film Directors Guild's (CFDG) first Young Directors Support Program. His debut feature Looking for Lucky, based on the characters of friends from his hometown, won the inaugural Early Bird New Directors Film Fund of the Hong Kong International Film Festival. Jiang's screenplay is also nominated at this month's Shanghai International Film Festival’s Asian New Talent Awards.

Best known internationally for his role as the disgruntled miner in Jia Zhangke's A Touch of Sin (2013), Jiang Wu was at the forefront of a new populist independent cinema in the 1990s with Zhang Yang's Shower (1999). Over 25 years, he has worked with directors as diverse as Zhang Yimou, Peter Chan and Yang Shupeng. Jiang attends NYAFF with Xin Yukun's western-noir Wrath of Silence in which, in a role reversal, he plays a corrupt mining magnate who meets his match in a mute worker. Jiang dominates the screen with his nuanced performance as a terrifying member of the nouveau riche.

Kanata Wolf (born Tanaka Yuichiro) worked as a chef in his native Osaka before becoming the owner of the arts complex Michikusa Apartment, where his debut feature Smokin’ on the Moon (2017) was filmed. He is a member of the Osaka-and-Bangkok-based hip-hop collaborative Tom Yum Samurai, which features musicians from Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, France and New York City. As well as composing music, he has directed many music videos, sports films and commercials. He was the creative director and composer for Nakai Yu's Thai-shot Bloody Snake Under the Sun (2007) set in a lost Okinawa of the 1960s.

Like Song Kang-ho and Choi Min-shik, Kim Yoon-seok had a successful career as a stage actor long before becoming an unlikely movie star. His big screen breakthrough came almost two decades later as a ruthless gambler in Choi Dong-hoon's Tazza: The High Rollers (2006). He is best known internationally for his role in Na Hong-jin’s The Chaser (2008, NYAFF 2011) as a morally ambiguous cop-turned-pimp hunting down a serial killer. Always reliable, he is a recurring actor in the films of Choi, Na and Jang Joon-hwan. Jang's 1987: When the Day Comes, with a career-best performance by Kim, screens at NYAFF this year.

Kevin Ko came to prominence for a series of short films he made in college, including horror The Print (2004) that screened at festivals in Japan and South Korea. He made his directorial debut with slasher-horror Invitation Only (2009), which pushed the boundaries of good taste in Taiwan cinema with its fast cars, dismemberment and a Japanese adult video actress. His anarchic parody The Bendover (2012), commissioned by LeTV and co-directed by Leste Chen, competed at the Taipei Film Festival. One of Taiwan's most in-demand film trailer editors, he attends NYAFF with his first China feature, romantic comedy Dude's Manual.

Kongkiat Komesiri started out as a crew member on Apichatpong Weerasethakul's debut feature Mysterious Object at Noon (2000) before forging a career as one of Thailand's most in-demand screenwriters. He made his directorial debut as a co-director on gory black magic horror Art of the Devil II (2005). A frequent collaborator of Wisit Sasanatieng, he has been at the forefront of Southeast Asian genre cinema with martial arts film Muay Thai Chaiya (2007), serial killer thriller Slice (2010), underworld epic The Gangster (2012), and eastern western Khun Pan (2016). He attends NYAFF as a producer with Bongkod Bencharongkul's Sad Beauty.

Dante Lam entered the film industry as a production assistant at Cinema City in 1985, just as the studio birthed a new kind of action cinema by John Woo and Ringo Lam. He started directing his own action films in 1997, including dark action-drama Beast Cops (1998), which won Best Picture and Best Director at the Hong Kong Film Awards. Over the next five years, Lam was hard to pin down, making a series of genre experiments. In 2008, after a two year hiatus, he returned with labyrinthine psychodrama Beast Stalker which kickstarted the most exciting decade of his career. He attends NYAFF with his biggest film yet, epic action spectacle Operation Red Sea (2018), now the second-highest grossing Chinese-language film of all time.

Together with director Dante Lam, producer Candy Leung is responsible for pushing the technical possibilities of Chinese-language cinema. When Lam started working as an assistant director in the early 1990s, Leung was already working as his production manager. For the past 14 years, they have been inseparable as director-and-producer partners. Outside of her working relationship with Lam, Leung produced several independent films, including new director omnibus Heroes in Love (2001) and Alex Law's drama Echoes of the Rainbow (2010). She has already signed three new contracts with investors for upcoming films to be directed by Lam.

US-born Rayya Makarim has co-written, co-directed and co-produced several key films in Indonesian film history, from Nan Achnas' Whispering Sands in 2001 to Mike Wiluan's eastern western Buffalo Boys in 2018. In 2008, she co-directed Jermal (a.k.a. Fishing Platform) together with Ravi Bharwani. First developed at a screenwriting workshop in 2003, Jermal received production finance from the Locarno International Film Festival and Rotterdam's Hubert Bals Fund. She has also written for Indonesian directors Rudy Soedjarwo (Rumah ketujuh) and Teddy Soeriaatmadja (Banyu biru). Her upcoming films include Bharwani's 27 Steps of May.

Erik Matti is one of Asia's most ambitious filmmakers. An assistant director to Peque Gallaga, he made his debut with Scorpio Nights 2 (1999), a sequel to his mentor's erotic classic. He has made subversive horrors (Pa-siyam, Seklusyon), world-building fantasy epics (Tiktik, Exodus), gritty crime dramas (Ekis, On the Job) and costumed superhero films (Gagamboy, in-production Darna). While always audience-focused, Matti and his films are becoming more political; they have recently focused on systemic corruption and religious hypocrisy in the Philippines. BuyBust is his headiest achievement yet, spinning high-octane action tropes into a scathing commentary on the ongoing drug war.

Alberto "Treb" Monteras II has long-nurtured a passion for filmmaking; at the age of six, he was making stop-motion animations with coins and his father’s video camera. A graduate in advertising, he studied filmmaking at the Mowelfund Film Institute. He has directed TV shows, commercials, live concerts and over 300 music videos. His feature debut Respeto which draws parallels between a martial law poet and a teenager competing in underground rap battles, has dominated domestic film awards, winning Best Picture at the Cinemalaya Film Festival. He next directs big-budget superhero film Pedro Penduko based on the Filipino comic book character.

A graduate of the Film School of Tokyo, Naito Eisuke first gained notice with his 16mm-shot splatter short The Prince of Milk (2008) about a lactose-intolerant serial killer of schoolgirls. It introduced many of the motifs of his future features. His hour-long Let's Make the Teacher Have a Miscarriage Club (NYAFF 2012) gained attention not only for its sensational title but also for its darkly black humor. Naito extended his fan base with Puzzle (2014) that combined his politically incorrect content with candy-colored highschool weirdness. He attends NYAFF with Liverleaf, a surprisingly poetic film with nuanced performances about teenage bullying.

Born in Perlis, Malaysia's smallest state, Nam Ron ("hot water" in Thai) is the stage name of Shahili Bin Abdan. A trained automechanic, and graduate of Kuala Lumpur's National Arts Academy, he has worked in theater, television and film as a director, writer and actor. His independent feature films Gedebe (2003) and the never-released Gadoh (2009) explore the underground music scene and the taboo subject of racism in Malaysian schools. His first commercial feature was serial killer thriller Psiko: Thief of Hearts (2013). His ground-breaking, multi-cultural Crossroads: One Two Jaga, focuses on police corruption and systemic racism in contemporary Malaysia.

Fukuoka-born Ogata Takaomi dropped out of film school after three months. At 25-yeas-old, he self-financed his debut feature after quitting his salaryman job. Like his later films, Never Ending Blue (2009) focuses on the despair of youth, here featuring incest and real wrist-cutting. His next feature, Body Temperature (2011) is about a man in love with his live-in lifelike doll only to encounters her real life doppelgänger. Sunk in the Womb (2013) is based on a true incident of child abuse and murder in Osaka. His The Hungry Lion (2017) is a scathing indictment of "fake news" and its consequences.

Richard Somes moved to Manila to study, only to work part-time as a props man on Erik Matti's Scorpio Nights 2 (1999). He soon became the Philippines' most in-demand art director and production designer, breathing life into Matti's Prosti (2002) and Gagamboy (2004), Mac Alejandre's Ang Panday (2009) and Dodo Dayao's Violator (2014). He founded Strawdogs Studio Production in 2007 to direct his first feature, horror Affliction/Yanggaw (2008), a retelling of the aswang mythology. He has continued to make diverse genre films with female protagonists including Erich Gonzales-starrers Mariposa in the Cage of the Night (2002) and We Will Not Die Tonight (2018).

Takeshita Masao started in the film industry as an assistant director of film legends Higashi Yoichi, Fujita Toshiya, and Taiwan's Edward Yang. He also worked as assistant director on Harada Masato's youth drama Bounce-ko Gals. Takeshita made his directorial debut with Jump in 2003. Based on a novel by Sato Shogo, it stars Harada Taizo in his first leading role as a salaryman searching for his missing lover. He returns to filmmaking with Midnight Bus, also based on a novel, starring Harada as a bus driver who has returned to his hometown of Niigata only to haunted by his past.

A former volleyball star, multi-faceted Stephy Tang started out as the lead singer of girls’ band The Cookies before forging a successful solo career. She also started a fashion label and wrote a romance novel. Best known for a series of popular rom-coms directed by Patrick Kong beginning with Marriage with a Fool (2006), she has recently taken on a series of more challenging roles, including that of a pregnant policewoman investigating a morbid murder case in Somewhere Beyond the Mist. In The Empty Hands, she plays a young woman who reaches self-actualization by stepping back into the fighting ring.

Tominaga Masanori, from Japan's northwestern Shikoku, won an honorary mention at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen for his thesis short Dolmen (1999). His made his feature debut with comedy The Pavilion Salamandre (2006), which starred Joe Odagiri as the titular lizard's X-ray technician. He has continued to worked with Japanese cinema's most exciting young actors including Sometani Shota in Pandora's Box (2009) and Yamada Takayuki in Vengeance Can Wait (2010), both recipients of NYAFF's Rising Star Asia award. The festival opens with his latest and best film, Dynamite Graffiti, starring NYAFF guest Emoto Tasuku as underground publisher Suei Akira.

Skilled in kickboxing, wrestling and Brazilian jiu-jitsu, US-born Brandon Vera has been a competitive mixed martial artist since 2002. Now based in Metro Manila, he currently holds the heavyweight champion title of Southeast Asia's One Championship. He made his acting debut in Erik Matti's Buybust as a drug enforcement agent. Upcoming projects include zombie apocalypse film Hawa, in which he plays a father protecting his family; and Sean Yim's action film The Wind Breezes On, in which he plays an undercover cop opposite Hong Kong's Dennis To. He is expected to defend his MMA title later this year.

Mike Wiluan had an early start watching movies, orgying on the VHS tapes that his father supplied to oil rig workers in the Java Sea. After graduating from the University of Kent’s film school in the UK, he acquired post-production house Infinite Frameworks in 2004 and transformed it into a major studio with production facilities in Indonesia's Batam and Singapore. After producing Singapore's first animated feature, Sing to the Dawn (2008), Wiluan produced the Mo Brothers' horror Macabre (2009) and action film Headshot (2016), key films in transforming Indonesia into a quality genre powerhouse. Buffalo Boys is his directorial debut.

After graduating from the Beijing Film Academy's photography department in 2009, Xin Yukun directed the short film Seven Nights (2010). Influenced by Paul Haggis' Crash, and similarly interweaving the fates of different characters, it displayed his playfulness with narrative structure. After developing the screenplay for three years, he directed his striking debut feature The Coffin In the Mountain, a twisty crime drama set in a remote Chinese village that made six times its budget at the China box office. He returns to rural China with the western-noir Wrath of Silence, set near his own hometown on the border of Mongolia.

As a teenager, Hong Kong's Jennifer Yu worked as a model representing various brands including Shiseido. She began her acting career in television dramas; her first leading film role was as a street-wise masseuse in Tracy Choi's Macau-set Sisterhood (2016). Yu won Best New Young Actress at the 1st International Film Festival & Awards Macao (IFFAM) and secured a Best Newcomer nomination at the Hong Kong Film awards. In 2017, she secured new artist awards for her nascent singing career. She has several films opening in 2018 including Li Jun's Tracey, Jevons Au's Distinction and Sunny Chan's Men on the Dragon.