Asian Drama

This work is a human drama that revolves around two individuals: a doctor troubled by life’s challenges and a patient who has been given a terminal diagnosis. As they journey through various places, they seek the answer to the eternal question of why people live and what they leave behind.

A reporter discovers the existence of a "comment unit" while reporting on online public opinion manipulation and encounters a shocking reality while covering them.

(Source: Daum)

Adapted from the novel "Daetkkeulbudae" (댓글부대) by Jang Kang Myung (장강명).

A coastal city in Brazil. Kai arrives from Taiwan for holidays with a broken heart. A broken air conditioner sends her into Fu Ang’s umbrella store. He could become a friend, but the rainy season doesn't arrive and his shop disappears. While looking for Fu Ang, Kai discovers the story of Xiaoxin and a group of Chinese workers in a posh skyscraper. Kai finds herself strangely mirrored in Xiaoxin’s tale.

Adapted from the novel "Novoland: Revival" (九州·龙悸) by Tang Que.

Min Ah discovers a scarlet-covered diary as she is hurrying to school. She has a brief hallucinatory experience when she opens it, initiating a series of strange occurrences which eventually draw Min Ah into the eerie world of the diary. In her desire to find out more about the diary, Min Ah feigns an illness, getting permission to lie down in the school's clinic.

There she witnesses the reunion of Hyo Shin and Shi Eun. The day in the girls' high school is half over, and the students are preoccupied with the trauma of getting their physical checkups. Suddenly their hustle and bustle are abruptly interrupted by a sharp scream which announces the death of Hyo Shin. Soon, her ghostly entity will linger over everyone's secret.

A rather simplistic payoff doesn't prevent Beyond Our Ken from being an excellent film, as well as another assured effort from director Edmond Pang Ho-Cheung. Gililan Chung and Tao Hong are excellent, and the emotions the film conveys are remarkably felt. Not much occurs, but the road travelled makes this one of 2004's better films.

Gillian Chung of Twins reveals hidden depths beneath her squeaky-clean popstar persona in the refreshing and darkly emotional Beyond Our Ken. Directed by Edmond Pang (Men Suddenly in Black), the film details the burgeoning friendship between two obvious romantic rivals: Ching (Gillian Chung), spurned girlfriend of the eponymous Ken (Daniel Wu), and Shirley (Mainland actress Tao Hong), Ken's current flame. The two girls meet when Ching approaches Shirley needing help. Ken took some nude photos of Ching and posted them on the Internet, and she wants them back. Since Shirley currently has an in with Ken, she's the obvious candidate for help. Yet why would the current girlfriend wish to help the ex?

The film tells that during the period of the Republic of China, Lu Moshan, a Sichuan opera prop master, was imprisoned because he was a gangster for the deputy director in the crew. After being released, he disguised himself and...

After an earthquake, a husband and wife doctor team close their own clinic and do volunteer work in the stricken area.

For local pharmacist In-ku, marriage has always been the lowest priority because of his need to take care of his mentally-ill brother. In his life comes along Hye-ran, an imitation clothing designer, who leads a hard life as she tries to repay the debts left by her father. A chance encounter allows them to recognize what they have been missing, and to find solace in each other. However, as their love grows, so do each of their burdens.

Jung-Woo (Kim Sung-Su) is a neurosurgeon and also works in bioengineering research. He is married, but has an ongoing relationship with Yoo-Gyeong (Han Go-Eun). She is a doctor and stands by Jung-Woo. Yoo-Gyeong has a mysterious accident one day and her hand is cut off in the accident. Thanks to Jung-Woo's quick thinking, her hand is reattached successfully with surgery. Yoo-Gyeong's health improves after the surgery, but bizarre events take place around her constantly.

The story begins with the tale of a classic Korean story of romance about a princess named Pyun-gang whose husband, On-dal dies. Then we flash forward to a mother who has brought her haunted daughter (also named Pyun-gang) to a psychic, who informs her that her daughter is haunted by the ghost of the princess . He then goes on to say that the girl must marry her On-dal by her 16 birthday and produce a child within a year otherwise she will die. The family treats it skeptically until years later, Pyun-gang has several near-death experiences and is immediately spooked, convinced she is going to die. As luck would have it, soon thereafter, a new transfer student joins Pyun-gang's class. His name is On-dal, and he's intelligent, handsome and rich which really doesn't make the prospect of high school marriage such a tough deal for Pyun-gang, what with her impending death and all.

Mu Zi's parents' old apartment is still there. A bed, an abandoned chair, a window falling off its hinges – the remnants of a relationship that has moved on. Her father has started a new family, her mother has friends abroad; it seems like only Mu Zi cares about this place. In The Cloud in Her Room, she wanders several times through this static past.

In her palpably personal debut film, Chinese filmmaker Zheng Lu Xinyuan follows her 22-year-old protagonist as she returns to Hangzhou, where she was born, for the New Year's celebration. She arranges to meet old friends, makes some new ones and visits her parents, with whom she is mostly on friendly terms. It's like she doesn't really fit in anywhere. Mu Zi is living in limbo: like the apartment, she has stopped, caught between past and future.

Zheng Lu, who shot her film in black-and-white, underlines Mu Zi's alienation through directorial decisions that are at times daring. She combines handheld documentary footage, in which Mu Zi interviews people around her, with more distant camerawork. As a child of separated parents, born at the time of the one child policy and having grown up in a China where everything is changing at breakneck speed, Zheng Lu has made a melancholy, topical film about her generation and the society in which they are growing up. At the same time, it is a universal story about love, relationships, the impossibility of keeping these going and the loneliness this causes.