From Taiwan to Thailand: 5 Hidden Gems From Asia You Definitely Missed in 2024
Intense dramas, exciting sci-fi and coming-of-age stories.
It's impossible to cover all of cinema in a year. Even if you follow festivals, distribution, and major streaming releases, there will almost certainly be a huge number of gaps in areas where neither critics nor the general public are paying attention.
As we look back on 2024, here are five great films from Asia that you probably didn't see.
1. Shadow of Fire, 2024
Shinya Tsukamoto, the author of the cult body horror film Tetsuo, has spent the last few years focusing on the trauma of post-war Japanese society.
The characters of his new film are an orphaned boy, the widow of a military man who works as a prostitute, and a soldier who dreams of taking revenge on his commander for all the cruelty he inflicted on him during his years of military service.
Mentally broken people try to build a new life out of the ashes and, although not without difficulties, they manage to cope with the catastrophe.
2. Old Fox, 2024
The movie begins in 1989 and focuses on the fate of eleven-year-old Liao Jie. As the boy grows up, so does the country.
Just as Taiwan is developing at such a rapid pace that its own population cannot keep up with the new realities, the world around Liao Jie is spinning so wildly that you have to shed all your prejudices and trust yourself.
At Taiwan's equivalent of the Oscars, the film won awards for best direction and best soundtrack.
3. Not Friends, 2024
Not Friends is a perfect mix of high school comedy and coming-of-age drama. The plot revolves around the shooting of a short movie in memory of a classmate who died prematurely.
Of course, no one knows how to film, the deceased was not as perfect as he seemed at first glance, and in general the living are always more important than the dead.
The movie knocks you off your feet with its frenetic energy – an abundance of black humor and sudden plot twists grab you from the very first minutes, and the next two and a half hours fly by completely unnoticed. It's hard to imagine a better introduction to Thai cinema.
4. Time Still Turns the Pages, 2024
With his debut film Time Still Turns the Pages, Nick Cheuk has already become the best young director not only in Hong Kong but also in Taiwan. His story of parental psychological abuse of a child is not only heartbreaking, but also shows the consequences such abuse can have on all other family members many years later.
Time Still Turns the Pages is an incredibly talented work – no other movie of 2024 evokes such piercing emotions.
5. Escape From the 21st Century, 2024
The main sci-fi of 2024 was filmed in China. Escape From the 21st Century starts with a crazy introduction about high school students who live on an alternate earth and can travel through time.
Every few minutes, the teen fantasy turns into a slapstick comedy, then a dystopia, then an action movie, then a melodrama, and so on, without stopping for a second.