New Currents

• Japan
• 1998
• 90min

Set on a small island near Kyushu, Japan, Paradise Sea begins with an encounter between Shinji, a member of a traveling dance troupe, and an old man who has spent a lifetime building wooden boats. Drawn to the old man by some stra...

New Currents

• Hong Kong
• 1998
• 95min

Too Many Ways To be No.1 explores how a decision made at any one moment in a person′s life can change its entire course. The film′s two-part structure presents separate situations which initially appear unconnected to one another,...

New Currents

• Thailand
• 1998
• 105min

Hollywood′s Back to the Future and Buddhist reincarnation theory meet each other in this film about overcoming the irreversibility of time. A common theme in film, it is interesting to see how this eternal desire of human beings i...

New Currents

• China
• 1998
• 106min

Zhouqing, who quit school to help his poor household meets Juhlai, a train conducter in a boiler room at the cargo train station, and they become fast friends. One day Zhouqing gets hit by a truck, badly injuring his leg. Julai ma...

New Currents

• Korea
• 1998
• 85min

What does it mean to break the rules in these times? When does speed come to a halt? Where do taboo and violation branch out? This film explores these questions through the words of poet Kim Soo-Young. Part 1: A 30-year old man me...

New Currents

• India
• 1998
• 115min

Kishunsah is an elderly man who decides to divide his property among his sons when conflicts escalate within his extended family. Kishunsah goes to live with the youngest son, Ramsharan, who tries to provide a respectable retireme...

New Currents

• Japan
• 1998
• 118min

"How surprising is the fact that my existence can be a part of somebody else′s happiness?" This is director Kore-Eda Hirokazu′s question to the audience in this story about ′reminiscence′ and ′happiness′, even as it deals wtih the...

New Currents

• Iran
• 1998
• 73min

Using documentary-style footage, The Tree of Life is a poetic tale which takes place in the Talesh mountain region of northern Iran. Director Farhad Mehranfar, a veteran of numerous documentaries on mountain people, offers audienc...

New Currents

• China
• 1998
• 107min

By far the most interesting film from China this year, Xiao Wu starts out looking like an exercise in grungy social realism but gradually reveals itself to be something much more surprising. The eponymous protagonist is a scummy-b...

New Currents

• Japan
• 1998
• 101min

Nine lugubrious men meet on a tour bus outside Naha Airport in Okinawa, joining a tour organiser, a guide and a driver, all of them dead serious. All with debts they cannot pay, they plan to die in an ‘accidental’ crash two days l...