The 20th edition of the Hawaii International Film Festival (HIFF) awarded the top prizes in its competition section to Im Kwon Taek's Chunhyang, which took the best feature award, and Tom Zubrycki's The Diplomat, which won best documentary.

Chunghyang, based on a popular Korean folk song, premiered at Cannes this year and has just been chosen as South Korea's entry for the Foreign-language Academy Award. Australian film The Diplomat tells the story of East Timorese Nobel Peace Prize winner Jose Ramos Horta.

Meanwhile, Sun Zhou's Breaking The Silence won the NETPAC (Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema) Award for best Asian film. Special Mention went to Spinning Gasing, a Malaysian film directed by Tan Teck. The Aloha Airlines Hawaii Film & Videomaker Award went to Kala'iokona Ontai's Kailil'auokekoa, the first feature film made in the Hawaiian language. The Blockbuster Video Audience Award for best feature went to Gene Cajayon's The Debut, for best documentary to Andy Nehl's Buried Country and for best short to Matt Yamanishi's Taro Roots.

Among individual honorees were Roger Deakins, who received the Eastman Kodak Award for Excellence in Cinematography, and Tom Selleck, who was given the State of Hawaii's Filmmaker in Hawaii Award for his contributions to the Hawaiian film industry, most notably his long-running TV series Magnum PI.

Held November 3-12 on Oahu and November 13-20 on five of the Neighbor Islands, HIFF was one of the first festivals in the US to specialise in films from the Asian and Pacific region.