Editor

- This really is a historic, record-breaking edition, the one that Far East Film Festival is about to share - from 24 April to 2 May - with its devoted fans: not only because of all the hot picks in the program, but also for the exceptional quality of premieres (1 world, 20 international, 14 European), given the fact that most of the names and titles are already well-established in the new Asian cinema!

Departures, the Japanese film, may have been awarded Best Foreign Film on Oscar night, but other films that will be featured at this great Udinese festival have shined at the recent Hong Kong Film Awards too. The most important awards in Chinese cinema went to Wilson Yip who, beating the colossal John Woo, won Best Film with his extraordinary biopic Ip Man, while Nick Cheung won Best Actor for his role in Dante Lam's The Beast Stalker (both Nick and Dante will be coming to Udine). The big winner of the evening was, however, Ann Hui with The Way We Are, a poetic docudrama which won Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Actress.

It is, in fact, to Ann Hui, queen of the Hong Kong New Wave and an endless talent who has always managed to maintain a balance between genre films and auteur films, that Far East Film Festival pays homage this year: other than The Way We Are, more than 10 hours of her 1970s television work will be shown for the first time in the West at the festival...

In any case, the brilliant pair of films scheduled for the opening night on their own epitomize the power of this eleventh edition: the cult Ong Bak 2 directed by and starring Tony Jaa kicks off the sumptuous section dedicated to Thai Action, and Crazy Racer, a splendid black comedy by the wonderful Ning Hao (a third Coen brother?), who returns to make his mark after the highly acclaimed Crazy Stone (2006). And what a mark this is! Crazy Racer is a peerless masterpiece which has changed the landscape of black Chinese humor and will easily make the list of greatest hits of the Far East Film Festival (and rightly so)!

What is Far East Film? It is a return ticket to the Far East, a journey that lasts nine days, from 24 April to 2 May, departing from the small port of Udine, making a stop at a faraway universe which the festival brings a little closer! The Centro Espressioni Cinematografiche of Udine is ready to set sail with a cargo of 56 films from 9 countries, which will show to its lucky passengers the face and the soul of these lively cities filled with history and passion: from Seoul to Tokyo, Beijing to Hong Kong, Jakarta to Manila, before finally reaching, further east, Taipei, via Singapore and Bangkok.

With an overall attendance at the main festival HQ Teatro Nuovo "Giovanni da Udine" and the screens at Visionario of over 50,000 people, Far East Film has seen, year after year, an increase in interest from the international, national, and local public, all of whom are now loyal fans. And even now, just hours before the beginning of the festival, the numbers speak for themselves - there have been more than a thousand requests for accreditation. As is the norm, many of these requests are from journalists, not only from Europe but also from Asia and America...