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After Hong Kong superstars Stephy Tang and Josie Ho brought the glamour to the red carpet and Japanese legend Takeshi Kitano collected his Golden Mulberry Lifetime Achievement award live from Tokyo (“I’m now editing my new film and I hope to come to Udine to present it to you”), Far East Film Festival 24 comes to an end with a grand total of 40 thousand spectators. 40 thousand spectators who, for nine days, literally became a single body…

As per a tradition dating back to the very first edition, it was the Feff public who chose the winner. This year the Golden Mulberry was awarded to:

Miracle: Letters to the President

by Lee Jang-hoon, a sweet-natured hymn to the power of dreams.

In second and third place on the podium was China with:

Return to Dust

by Li Ruijun

To Cool to Kill

by Xing Wenxiong

Black Dragon pass-holders also voted for:...

“Miracle: Letters to the President,” directed by Lee Jang-hoon, was Saturday named as the best film winner at the Far East Film Festival in Italy’s Udine, following an audience poll. The South Korean-made film was described by festival organizers as “a sweet-natured hymn to the power of dreams.”

Second and third places belonged to Chinese-produced pictures, Li Ruijun’s “Return to Dust” and Xing Wenxiong’s “To Cool to Kill,” respectively. The festival’s Black Dragon season ticket holders voted for “Return to Dust,” while users of the MYmovies service championed Korea’s “Kingmaker” by Byun Sung-hyun.

The jurors for the best debut film awarded the festival’s White Mulberry award to “Too Cool to Kill.” The Mulberry Award for best screenplay Jojo Hideo’s “Love Nonetheless.”

If the order of the prizes seemed like a return to pre-covid normality, so too did the operation of the event, Udine’s 24th.

The Far East Film Festival in Italy’s Udine has set Chinese-Italian co-production “The Italian Recipe” as the opening title of a revived, largely in-person event.

The film, directed by Hou Zuxin, sees an unexpected series of events bring together a Chinese reality TV show contestant and a woman already resident in Italy. The collision of personalities, connections and chemistry between stars Liu Xun and Yao Huang resemble those of “Roman Holiday,” festival organizers suggest. The film has its world premier on Friday next week, launching a nine-day event that runs until April 22-30.

The 2022 selection runs to 72 titles, selected from over 400 submissions, numbers that organizers say, is proof that Asian filmmaking was not halted by the Covid-19 pandemic. “The fear, not unreasonable, given all the halted productions, dismantled sets and release dates announced and then postponed for months, that there wouldn’t be many films to choose from was...

Disney+ has snatched up new Italian drama series Anna for much of Europe, inking a deal with Fremantle to launch the show from award-winning writer-director Niccolò Ammaniti (The Miracle, I’m Not Scared) on its streaming service in various countries, including the U.K. and Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany and across the Nordic territories.

Fremantle, whose Italian company Wildside (The Young Pope) produced Anna as a Sky original together with Arte France, has closed deals for more than 30 territories for the series, from Poland (Canal+) to Russia and Cis (Amedia TV), from Korea (Watcha) to French-speaking Canada (Videotron).

Anna, which Ammaniti adapted from ...

Disney+ has snatched up new Italian drama series Anna for much of Europe, inking a deal with Fremantle to launch the show from award-winning writer-director Niccolò Ammaniti (The Miracle, I’m Not Scared) on its streaming service in various countries, including the U.K. and Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany and across the Nordic territories.

Fremantle, whose Italian company Wildside (The Young Pope) produced Anna as a Sky original together with Arte France, has closed deals for more than 30 territories for the series, from Poland (Canal+) to Russia and Cis (Amedia TV), from Korea (Watcha) to French-speaking Canada (Videotron).

Anna, which Ammaniti adapted from ...

Local thriller “On The Line” held on to top spot at the South Korean box office charts. But its weak total showed that the boost to cinemas from the Chuseok holidays had been short-lived.

“On the Line” managed $1.56 million in its second weekend, a score which was only 28% down on its debut, according to data from Kobis, the box office tracking service provided by the Korean Film Council (Kofic). That gave it a 39% share of the weekend total, ahead of “Miracle: Letters to the President” with $647,000 and a 16% share, and “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” with $529,000 and a 13% share.

The day-by-day figures reveal that “On The Line” enjoyed two days with $1 million takings, on Tuesday and Wednesday, at the height of the holiday. But, with many people returning to work later in the week, the film’s Thursday and Friday scores were down to just $317,000 and $330,000 respectively.