Shaolin Soccer opens this month's Sydney Asia Pacific Film Festival, kicking off a week of Asian fare.

Stephen Chow and Lik-Chi Lee's Hong Kong title follows a down-at-heel soccer star who tries to get a Shaolin monk apprentice with a gift for soccer to play in the national football finals.

The festival, which runs August 9-18, will screen 14 Asian films ranging from critically-acclaimed pictures such as Devils On The Doorstep, which won the Cannes Grand Jury Prize last year, to Bang Rajan, the top-grossing Thai film last year. Closing the event is a new print of 1975 action flick The Man From Hong Kong, in which erstwhile 007 George Lazenby re-surfaces as an evil Australian gang boss battling would-be Bruce Lee, Jimmy Wang Yu.

Two seminars, panelled by Asian and Australian film industry experts and filmmakers, will discuss filmmaking in Asia. One is based on a case study of The Quiet American, the second focuses on digital filmmaking.