The Pramana program consisted of independent works produced over the last two years, chosen to give voice to authors who have used the language of cinema to tell stories of redemption and rebellion, love and hope, pain and resignation, which made our audience laugh, cry, reflect, and empathize.

The 15 countries represented are: Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Kazakhstan, Palestine, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Türkiye, Vietnam.

Different cultures, socio-economic situations and traditions, which only partially represent the enormous complexity of the Asian continent, but took our audience on a journey to discover new aspects of the world and humanity.

We saw various characters, of all ages and social backgrounds, speaking Arabic, Bengali, Cantonese, Central Khmer, English, Farsi, Filipino, Hebrew, Indonesian, Japanese, Kazakh, Korean, Kurdish, Malay, Mandarin, Min Nan, Russian, Turkish.

Among the different genres that form the selection, there were comedies, thrillers, romantic and family dramas, experimental, surreal and magical films, documentaries, love stories with happy and sad endings, films where children became the protagonists and described the world through their eyes.

Recurring themes included: confronting death, identity conflicts, relationships with family and work in societies such as ours, which are changing rapidly and facing identity loss and globalization.

During the last evening, we presented a special program that we have dedicated to the Palestinian people, victims of genocide carried out with the complicity of Western governments. Three short films by three Palestinian directors described what it means to live in an illegally occupied land, using different languages and tones, including a light-hearted and ironic perspective.

The Vietnamese feature film Cu Li Never Cries closed the festival. Part of the ‘Panorama’ section of the 2024 Berlinale, the film traces the modern history of Vietnam through the perspective of a woman and her perseverance against changes in her family and society.