The Host by Bong Joon-Ho
The nominees for the 1st Asian Film Awards were unveiled on Jan. 29. The awards ceremony, to be held on March 20, will open the 31st Hong Kong Film Festival.
According to the Asian Film Academy's mission statement, the awards were created to "to acknowledge the finest of Asian Cinema, and bestow honor in various categories to film artists from across Asia, in the company of distinguished celebrities from around the world as guests and presenters."
"From across Asia"?
The vast majority of the nominated films hail from East Asia. India received only one nomination, while apart from Iran's two nods, West Asia was completely ignored and so was Central Asia. (Not to mention northern Asia, though I'm not sure if a Siberian movie would officially qualify as "Asian.")
South Korean cinema, for its part, was particularly well represented. The local blockbuster (and top Korean Film Awards winner) The Host, a comedy-horror-thriller about a mutant monster, garnered five nods, including best film and best actor (Song Kang-ho), while the psychological drama Woman on the Beach received three, including best director and best screenplay nods for Hong Sang-soo.
Qin Junjie, Lie Ye, Gong Li, Jay Chow in Curse of the Golden Flower
Among the other best film nominees are Venice Film Festival winner Still Life, a social drama directed by Jia Zhang-Ke; Garin Nugroho's Indonesian-Austrian drama with music Opera Jawa, the tale of a tragic love triangle; Yôji Yamada's Love and Honor, the story of a blind Samurai and his devoted wife; Johnnie To's crime thriller Exiled; and Zhang Yimou's highly successful period drama Curse of the Golden Flower, which also received nominations for best actress (Gong Li) and best visual effects.
Other nominees include Ziyi Zhang, vying for the best actress prize for The Banquet, and Ken Watanabe, competing in the best actor category for his performance as a man diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in Memories of Tomorrow. Chang Chen, at one point the favorite to win last year's best actor Golden Horse for The Go Master — until Chinese authorities decided to withdraw the film from competition — is also in the running.
The Hong Kong Film Festival runs March 20-April 11, 2007.