The year 2023, now coming to a bitter end, was jam-packed with all kinds of zeitgeist-piercing movies. Killers of the Flower Moon was outstanding, Oppenheimer was overhyped, and Barbie was frankly awful, in this writer’s honest opinion. But this was also, once again, a year in which East Asian filmmaking struck a powerful chord with commercial and arthouse audiences worldwide, with stories of foreign cultures and migrant experiences among the most potent to reach our screens.

Let’s start with the obvious. Past Lives – a US production by Korean-Canadian filmmaker Celine Song – was arguably the film of the year, and is now a frontrunner for an Academy Awards Best Picture nomination in 2024. It’s not the only story from the Korean diaspora to win major acclaim, either: Anthony Shim’s hidden gem Riceboy Sleeps, based on the director’s experiences as a teenager growing up in Canada, won the Audience Award at Glasgow Film Festival in March after picking up prizes in Canada and Korea in the months prior. Meanwhile, Madeline Gavin’s Beyond Utopia – about North Korean defectors risking their lives to flee via China, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand – was a deserving winner at Sundance; the nail-biting feature received the Audience Award for US Documentary in January.

These Western productions are just the tip of the iceberg for East Asian storytelling, though, with leading international film festivals backing creatives in Japan, China, Vietnam and more with major awards throughout the year. At Cannes, for example, Japanese veteran Koji Yakusho (Cure) became the first native actor in a generation to win the Best Actor prize, for his role as a public toilet cleaner in Wim Wenders’ Tokyo story, Perfect Days. A few months on, Hong Kong superstar Tony Leung (In The Mood For Love) would be brought to tears at Venice after becoming the first Chinese actor to win a lifetime achievement award. Three of his prior films (Hou Hsiao-hsien’s A City of Sadness; Tran Anh Hung’s Cyclo; and Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution) had won the festival’s top prize in previous years. 

With the latter star reuniting with his Infernal Affairs nemesis Andy Lau in Hong Kong crime thriller The Goldfinger (in UK cinemas December 30) while a super-sized Japanese icon returns to some of the loudest reviews of his career in Godzilla Minus One (Dec 15), the various filmmaking industries of East Asia look certain to end the year with a bang in 2023. Before they do, Dazed looks back on some of the highlights that you may have missed in the months gone by, including major award winners, 2024 Oscars submissions, and future cult classics.

MONSTER (HIROKAZU KORE-EDA), JAPAN 

Academy Award nominee and 2018 Palme d’Or winner Hirokazu Kore-eda (Shoplifters) is a director held to an extremely high standard – which is why, even though baby-smuggling drama Broker won a Jury Prize at Cannes in 2022 amidst a sea of critical acclaim, many fans were somewhat underwhelmed by the Korean production. Back in Japan for his next project, with the beloved late composer Ryuichi Sakamoto on board to deliver his final film score, the world-renowned auteur duly silenced the naysayers with his latest feature – which, frankly, is an absolute masterpiece.

Monster, which won the Best Screenplay award at Cannes this year, follows a single mother (Sakura Ando) as she confronts an unyielding school teacher (Eita Nagayama) after her son starts to exhibit strange behaviour. But the explanation is not as clear-cut as it initially seems. Events unfold Rashomon-style via several differing perspectives, each of which reveals a little bit more of the truth as the film creeps towards what could be a devastating final act.

CONCRETE UTOPIA (UHM TAE-HWA), KOREA

A blockbuster in more ways than one, Concrete Utopia tells the story of struggling residents in Seoul’s last-standing tower block following a devastating earthquake that levels the entire city. Ex-Terminator Lee Byung-hun (I Saw the Devil) plays the ragged group leader Yeong-tak, who strives to ensure the community’s survival via regular raids for resources and a policy of shutting out any non-residents from the area. But as tensions build, salvation seems increasingly unlikely in this post-apocalyptic smash, which harkens back to JG Ballard’s class conflict classic High Rise as well as HBO’s desperate, desolate video game adaption The Last of Us.

One of the highest-grossing movies of the year in Korea — ranking ahead of Barbie and Super Mario Bros. at the local box office — Concrete Utopia was also a hit when it reached the UK in October via a red carpet premiere in Leicester Square courtesy of London East Asia Film Festival. It’s now been submitted as Korea’s official submission to the Oscars in the Best International Feature Film competition.

THE BREAKING ICE (ANTHONY CHEN), CHINA/SINGAPORE

Another standout feature at the London East Asia Film Festival was the latest work from Singaporean director Anthony Chen, who previously won the Camera d’Or at Cannes in 2013 for his debut, Ilo Ilo.

The captivating Zhou Dongyu – star of Derek Tsang’s 2021 Academy Award-nominated youth drama Better Days – stars as a bus tour guide in the chilly Chinese border town of Yanji, near the border of North Korea. As she lets off steam in local nightclubs, she becomes entangled with a depressed city worker (Liu Haoran) and a slacking restaurant worker and possible petty thief (Qu Chuxiao), who collectively form a kind of ménage à trois while yearning for things beyond the reach of their cold, liminal surroundings.

Sumptuous cinematography and stellar performances imbue this subtle work with genuine warmth and richness, even if the meaning of it all is somewhat oblique. Like Concrete Utopia, The Breaking Ice has also now been submitted for Academy Awards consideration in the category of Best International Feature Film – the longlist for which will be announced in late December.

EVIL DOES NOT EXIST (RYUSUKE HAMAGUCHI), JAPAN

Off the back of his 2022 Academy Award win for Haruki Murakami adaption Drive My Car, many wondered whether Ryusuke Hamaguchi would be able to cement his position as Japan’s most promising arthouse auteur of the moment. After all, his three-hour grief meditation breakthrough had seemingly come out of left field. But in 2023, Evil Does Not Exist proves quite decisively that Hamaguchi is the real deal – it’s arguably even better than the former.

The Venice Grand Jury Prize winner (which also won Best Film at the BFI London Film Festival a few weeks later) reunites Hamaguchi with Drive My Car composer Eiko Ishibashi, with the pair initially intending to shoot a 30-minute dialogue-free short film. In the end, the director decided that this eco-conscious story –of a small rural community whose simple way of life is threatened by the proposal of an upmarket “glamping” business – was worthy of a feature-length treatment. The result is a deliberately paced but fascinating work steeped with eerie mystery.

INSIDE THE YELLOW COCOON SHELL (PHAM THIÊN ÂN), VIETNAM

Another highlight of the BFI London Film Festival this year (and the winner of the 2023 Camera d’Or for best debut feature at Cannes) was Phạm Thiên Ân’s three-hour art film Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell – a visually mesmerising piece of slow cinema that begins with a motorbike crash in Saigon and ends among the dense rice paddies and riverbeds of the jungle-like countryside.

Comparisons to Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Memoria) were apt, especially given the deeply naturalistic performances; meticulous shot composition; calculated long-takes; lush backdrops and mystifying, surrealist qualities. But above all, it’s simply a beautiful, meditative viewing experience that lingers well beyond the end credits roll.

MAD FATE (SOI CHEANG), HONG KONG

The Hong Kong film industry may no longer be the thriving “Hollywood of the East” it was once renowned to be, but filmmakers like Soi Cheang provide a good reminder of its glory days. Returning as director for the first time since delivering Hong Kong’s best film of 2021 – grimy, monochrome noir Limbo – Cheang reunites with leading man Gordon Lam (Infernal Affairs) as well as Johnnie To production house Milkyway Image for his latest crime hit, and the results are kaleidoscopic. 

An urban fortune teller (Lam) becomes obsessed with bizarre rituals as he attempts to alter the fate of a troubled young man destined to commit murder. All the while, a spate of killings rocks Hong Kong’s gritty underbelly. Slick cinematography and saturated neon colours form an eye-popping visual imprint in this future cult classic that, after debuting at the Berlin Film Festival, has become Hong Kong’s sixth highest-grossing native production in 2023.

RIVER (JUNTA YAMAGUCHI), JAPAN

In 2021, a micro-budget time-travel movie from a theatre troupe in Kyoto – shot over seven nights at their favourite local café – blew up at film festivals to become one of the underground indie hits of the year. In 2023, the group behind Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes decided to do it all again, taking the same mind-boggling concept (a group of characters are stuck in a two-minute time loop and must work out how to resolve it) ever-so-slightly further up the road to an idyllic hot springs resort, halfway up a mountain in Kibune.

River works even better than its predecessor thanks to snowcapped scenery and wood-beamed architecture that adds significantly to the film’s charm. The free-roaming cameras – which capture each time-loop in a single, unbroken take before resetting back to the same starting point – likewise prevent the repetitions from ever becoming boring. It’s this brilliant execution that makes it such fun, as kimono-wearing hotel workers strive desperately to maintain the business’ reputation while guests grow increasingly frustrated. A full UK home media release is due in February via Third Window Films.

ONLY THE RIVER FLOWS (WEI SHUJUN), CHINA 

A final highlight from this year’s BFI London Film Festival was this deeply atmospheric Chinese noir – a Cannes Un Certain Regard nominee alongside The Breaking Ice and eventual winner How to Have Sex, now due for a wider UK release in Spring 2024.

Set in a rural outpost sometime in the 1990s, the film follows a hard-boiled detective as he attempts to track down an elusive serial killer, who counts an elderly goose farmer among his victims. Drenched in cigarette smoke, heavy rain and shadows – and featuring a dense colour palette of darkest browns and greys, all captured on grainy 16mm film – Only the River Flows’ thick atmosphere is undoubtedly its greatest asset, adding significant weight to its cryptic narrative and dream sequences. 

Comparisons to Bong Joon-ho’s Memories of Murder or even David Lynch’s Lost Highway are well-earned – with the arthouse flick unexpectedly dominating the Chinese box office in late 2023, grossing over 250 million yuan ($36 million) after its release in October.