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Chicago, Il – – Asian Pop-Up Cinema: Season 13 will present 30 films at an in-person and drive-in festival, with select titles available for online streaming. The festival opens September 15 and runs through October 12, 2021, at AMC River East 21, The Davis Theater and ChiTown Drive-In.

The programming celebrates the best Asian-centric cinema, with new work made by filmmakers from China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the U.S. and Canada. This season will highlight women in film, stories with humanitarian themes and action thrillers, including four restored martial arts classics.

Season 13 opens with Jessica Kingdon’s Ascension, a documentary observing China’s growing class divide through labor, consumerism, and wealth. Structured in three parts, the film ascends through the levels of the capitalist structure and examines how the contemporary “Chinese Dream” remains an elusive fantasy for most.

Centerpiece film The Fable: The Killer Who Doesn’T Kill is Japanese director Kan Eguchi’s action/comedy follow-up to The Fable,...

Yagira Yuya, the Japanese actor who won the acting prize in Cannes for his role in Koreeda Hirokazu’s “Nobody Knows,” heads the cast of “Gift of Fire,” which stands as the first internationally co-produced film made in 8K.

In the fact-based drama, Yagira plays a nuclear scientist who struggles with his conscience while working Japan’s own nuclear weapon effort, a secret program that remained largely unknown until ten years ago.

The film is directed by Kurosaki Hiroshi, whose past work includes multi award-winning “Goldfish” (aka “Hi No Sakana”) and 2011’s “Second Virgin.” It was produced in partnership between Japanese public broadcaster Nhk and Los Angeles-based Eleven Arts.

“Gift of Fire” charts the relationship of the scientist, his younger brother, an air force pilot, played by Miura Haruma (“Attack on Titan”), and their lifelong female friend played by Arimori Kasumi (“Rurouni Kenshin: Final Chapter Part I – The Final”).

Nhk...