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Kiyohiko Shibukawa (left) and Katsuki Mori in a still from Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, one of our 12 best Asian films of 2021.

Lifestyle Entertainment

Ranked: the 12 best Asian films of 2021, from Drive My Car to Drifting and The Falls

Asia has produced some of the most acclaimed and widely talked about films of the year. Here are a dozen of the best, including Jun Li’s Drifting
Mamoru Hosoda’s Belle tells a story of grief, trauma and internet celebrity, while Drive My Car by Ryusuke Hamaguchi looks set to win big at the Oscars in 2022

Asian cinema

James Marsh

Published: 6:45pm, 28 Dec 2021

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While the coronavirus pandemic has done its damnedest to hamper film production, festival screenings and release schedules, the industry has remained defiant.

Asia in particular has produced some of the most acclaimed and widely talked about films of the year, from both established and fast-emerging directors.

In 2021, China cemented its position as the world’s most commercially successful market, thanks to blockbusters like Hi, Mom and The Battle for Lake Changjin, while Asian craftsmanship was recognised at all of the major international festivals.

We have compiled a list of the dozen best Asian films of 2021, as eclectic in origin as they are impressive in artistic merit.

12. The Falls (directed by Chung Mong-hong, Taiwan)

Winner of four Golden Horse awards, including best film and best original screenplay, The Falls is an uncharacteristically low-key drama from writer-director Chung Mong-hong.

Alyssa Chia Jing-wen and Gingle Wang Ching are both excellent as a divorced mother and her teenage daughter who are forced to quarantine together in their luxury flat during the pandemic. As the mother begins to lose her grip on reality, her daughter makes a series of shocking discoveries about their family. Read our review

11. In Front of Your Face (dir. Hong Sang-soo, South Korea)

Endlessly prolific filmmaker Hong Sang-soo presented a brace of new features this year, and this drama about a middle-aged actress (Lee Hye-young) returning to Korea after many years working in America proved by far the superior of the two.

As with much of Hong’s work, the film is meticulous in its execution – appearing loose and meandering before pulling its themes into sharp focus in a surprising final movement.

10. Vengeance is Mine, All Others Pay Cash (dir. Edwin, Indonesia)

Bestselling author Eka Kurniawan adapts his celebrated 2014 novel, together with acclaimed writer-director Edwin, into a thrilling, action-packed black comedy.

Marthino Lio plays a fearsome young scrapper harbouring an emasculating secret, who falls head-over-heels for Ladya Cheryl’s feisty bodyguard. What follows is a touching and often hilarious dissection of toxic masculinity and the healing power of love, which scooped the top prize at this year’s Locarno Film Festival. Read our interview with Edwin

9. Belle (dir. Mamoru Hosoda, Japan)

Japan’s foremost anime auteur spins Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve’s classic fairy tale Beauty and the Beast into a heartbreaking 21st century story of grief, trauma and internet celebrity, as a troubled teenager finds her voice as an online pop sensation.

Propelled by some of the year’s most eye-popping animation, and Kaho Nakamura’s transcendent musical numbers, Hosoda once again blurs the lines between fantasy and reality as he explores the complex relationships between children and their parents. Read our ranking of Hosoda’s best films

8. The Book of Fish (dir. Lee Joon-ik, South Korea)

The King and the Clown director Lee Joon-ik delivers yet another drama set in Korea’s Joseon era with this beautifully crafted and sensitively observed tale of an unlikely friendship between a scholar and a fisherman.

Evocatively shot in soft black and white, the film sees Sol Kyung-yu play real 18th century academic Jeong Yak-jeon, who is exiled to remote Heuksando island, where he meets the simple yet inquisitive Chang-dae (Byun Yo-han).

7. Drifting (dir. Jun Li Jun-shuo, Hong Kong)

Writer-director Jun Li Jun-shuo follows up his 2018 debut Tracey with this compassionate drama about the plight of Hong Kong’s homeless community.

Francis Ng Chun-yu plays a middle-aged drug addict, fresh out of prison, with nowhere to go but back onto the streets of a neighbourhood in the midst of urban gentrification. When the police move them on and heartlessly dispose of their meagre personal belongings, Cecilia Choi Si-wan’s social worker helps them fight for their rights. Read our review and interview with Li

6. Limbo (dir. Soi Cheang Pou-soi, Hong Kong)

Shot way back in 2017, Soi Cheang’s ferocious crime thriller sees the director return to the grime-smeared genre upon which he built his reputation. Lam Ka-tung delivers an unflinching performance as a dirty police officer given one last shot at redemption when he partners with Mason Lee’s by-the-book rookie to catch a grisly serial killer.

Shot in moody monochrome amid perpetual rain and waist-deep squalor, Limbo echoes David Fincher’s Seven with its defiantly nihilistic world view. Read our review

5. Memoria (dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand/Colombia)

For his first English-language feature, award-winning Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul recruits Tilda Swinton for a typically bizarre and dreamlike international odyssey.

Shot in Colombia and competing as that country’s submission for Best International Film at the 94th Academy Awards, Memoria tells the story of a British woman (Swinton) travelling alone in South America, who begins to experience strange sonic rumblings that compel her to venture out on a surreal and introspective journey of discovery. Read our review

4. Drive My Car (dir. Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Japan)

A critical darling that has topped critics’ lists around the world, Hamaguchi’s second film of 2021 looks set to score multiple Academy Award nominations in the new year.

Adapted from a short story by Haruki Murakami, Drive My Car is a slow-burning three-hour meditation on grief and forgiveness that charts the unlikely friendship between a widowed theatre director (Hidetoshi Nishijima) and his young female driver (Toko Miura), assigned to chauffeur him around Hiroshima. Read our review and interview with Hamaguchi

3. On the Job: The Missing 8 (dir. Erik Matti, Philippines)

Nine years after his blistering thriller On the Job, Erik Matti returns to complete the saga with this astonishing 208-minute crime epic. In the story, a small-town mayoral race becomes a hotbed of corruption, scandal and murder after a carload of outspoken journalists go missing.

John Arcilla won the best actor prize at the Venice Film Festival for his portrayal of a provocative radio pundit who suffers a crisis of conscience following their disappearance. Read our interview with Matti

2. A Hero (dir. Asghar Farhadi, Iran)

A good deed spirals out of control in Farhadi’s latest masterwork, which could see the Iranian auteur score a third Oscar win for his home country.

Amir Jadidi plays a divorcee in prison over an unpaid debt, who hatches a plan to pay his creditor and buy back his freedom. Swinging dexterously from farce to tragedy, A Hero is a sly critique of media manipulation and the dangerous clout wielded by the court of public opinion. Read our review

1. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (dir. Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Japan)

Overshadowed by awards juggernaut Drive My Car, Hamaguchi’s other 2021 film is a far more complex and emotionally dexterous triptych examining the complexities of modern relationships.

In each of the three stories, the female protagonist (respectively played by Kotone Furukawa, Katsuki Mori and Fusako Urabe) lies and manipulates, misinterprets or misleads the other characters in their efforts to find a meaningful connection. Without passing judgment, Hamaguchi masterfully engenders compassion for his struggling heroines. Read our review

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