Set against a chaotic, war torn Shanghai, “The Wasted Times” follows a local crime boss at the receiving end of the Japanese army’s attempt to forge a dubious alliance. Spanning three separate times during the period, the story details mindsets from various perspectives, all culminating in a suspenseful and tense finale.

In 1999, Young Mi, cruelly nicknamed “Ms. Apocalypse,” develops a crush on a married man who is imprisoned for embezzlement. Young Mi ends up imprisoned for aiding his crime. When she is released, her crush’s wife, Yu Jin, visits, offering to pay off her husband’s debt. Yet, because Yu Jin is physically disabled, Young Mi feels uneasy about taking her money. The two women eventually begin to live together. Their story is poignant yet consistently cheery, enlivening, and energetic.

(Source: BIFF)

Release dates: Oct 5, 2023 (Festival) || Jan 24, 2024 (Cinema)

Duration: 1 hr. 56 min.

Chen Cheng’s Taoist Master: Kylin is the quick fire sequel to Wu Yingxiang’s Taoist Master (released just a few months ago, already online), with Fan Siu Wong returning in the role of Zhang Taoling, the founder of the first organized form of Taoism, flanked by his disciple (Li Lubing, also returning). This time, Master Zhang arrives in a village near Mount Yun Jing, where Kylin, the legendary God of the Mountain, is rumored to prey on hunters and those foolhardy enough to venture into the mountain. While Taoist Master was on the higher end of Chinese direct-to-VOD films, this sequel is disappointingly average: it lacks the refreshing presence of Zhang Dong (who played a feisty huntress in the first film), it’s criminally low on fight scenes (one of the original’s strong suits), and the plot is the usual thudding supernatural set-up resolved with the censorship-placating hallucination card.

14-years-old Midori, who doesn't have a family, is picked by the Aka Neko circus troupe. Wanda Masamitsu has supernatural powers and he joins the same circus troupe. Midori has an affinity for Wanda, but she is afraid of him. Wanda gets members of the circus troupe to follow him using his supernatural powers and even commits murder.

Raj is a happy and free-spirited Indian-American bachelor who visits his ancestral homeland in Mumbai, to attend his cousin's wedding. Once in India, he finds himself pushed towards marriage by his overzealous uncle (Satish Shah). His uncle's employee, Namrata (Aishwarya Rai) chaperones Raj on a series of set-ups/dates, all of which he deliberately sabotages. During the course of the wedding ceremonies, Raj discovers that he is falling for Namrata. After some deliberation, he decides to tell her, but to his surprise, he discovers she has a 7-year-old son, Aditya....

The peace talks were just around the corner, but the peacekeeping police discovered that terrorists wanted to bury bombs to destroy the peace talks, so Chinese peacekeeping police Pu Fan entered the joint bomb disposal team to safeguard the peace talks. The joint team initially suspected Lampa, a well-known local bomb expert, as the murderer. However, Pu Fan received an anonymous letter from Lampa that contained the location where the bombs were planted. Turns out, behind this incident, there are two strong evil hidden forces...

The story revolves around two struggling comics, Takashi Komoto (Keisuke Koide) and Yohei Tanaka (Atsushi Ito), who have been performing together as a manzai comedy duo called “Boso Swimmers” for the past 12 years with very little success. The pair rarely discuss their concerns for the future together, even though they’re now 30 years old with little hope of making it big. Even so, they maintain their passion for comedy and start keeping an “exchange diary” as a way of communicating with each other more frankly.

Maira lives happily with Aiden, a doll maker and toy company owner. But Vanya, their adopted daughter and Aiden's niece, is still dealing with the loss of her birth mother. After Vanya plays Charlie's Pencil to summon her late mother, strange things begin to happen.