Japanese drama Fujiko has won the Uncaged Award for best feature film at the 25th New York Asian Film Festival, where South Korea’s My Name scooped the audience award.
Directed by Kimura Taichi, Fujiko follows a single mother in 1970s and ‘80s Japan as she refuses to surrender to societal pressures, raising her daughter with humour and resilience.
It was one of eight titles up for the award, which is dedicated to bold new voices and filmmakers pushing cinema in unexpected directions. The jury comprised actress Cindy Cheun, filmmaker Bao Nguyen, filmmaker Diane Paragas and Cinereach executive Dan Truong.
“With remarkable confidence, vision, and style, this film embraces the full expressive power of cinema,” said a statement from the jury. “Through its vibrant visual language and inventive use of animation and music, it tells a deeply heartfelt story centred on a refreshingly complex woman whose messy, imperfect journey through motherhood pushes against the expectations placed on women in 1970s Japan.
“Colourful, alive, and emotionally resonant, it is a film that reminds us that the most unforgettable characters are often the ones who refuse to be contained.”
The film received its world premiere at Udine’s Far East Film Festival, where it won the Golden Mulberry for best film, before going on win the Nippon Cinema Award at Germany’s Nippon Connection last month.
The jury gave a special mention to Kazakhstan’s Turgaud, a neo-western directed by Adilkhan Yerzhanov.
“This film surprised us with its bold, muscular visual storytelling, exhilarating and whimsical writing, and mesmerising performances that felt uniquely poignant, darkly funny, and propulsive,” said the jury. “The film gave us a unique vision into Kazakhstan from an exciting and accomplished yet undersung filmmaker.”
The winners were announced on the closing day of NYAFF, which ran July 10-26.
After a sold-out screening of closing film Dear You, organisers announced that the audience award had been won by Chung Ji-young’s South Korean drama My Name.
The film, which received its world premiere at the Berlinale, centres on a teenage boy who is bullied for his feminine name while his mother deals with the traumatic memories of the Jeju Uprising of April 3, 1948.
Dear You, Lan Hongchun’s multi-generational drama that has proved a box office sensation in China, received the second most amount of votes from NYAFF’s audience. In third was Montreal, My Beautiful, directed by Xiaodan He and starring Joan Chen as a Chinese immigrant wife and mother in Canada who has an affair with a younger Québécoise woman.
During the festival, NYAFF presented several honorary awards including the Star Asia Lifetime Achievement Award to Chen; the Extraordinary Star Asia Award to Colony star Gianna Jun; the Screen International Star Asia Award to Taiwanese actor Joseph Chang; the Best From The East Award to actor Daniel Wu; Screen International Rising Star Asia Awards to Japan’s Sara Minami and Hong Kong’s Angela Yeun; and the Daniel A. Craft Award for Excellence in Action Cinema to Hope director Na Hong-jin.
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