China-Italy Co-Production ‘Italian Recipe’ to Open Udine Asian Film Festival

variety.com:

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefThe Far East Film Festival in Italy’s Udine has set Chinese-Italian co-production “The Italian Recipe” as the opening title of a revived, largely in-person event.The film, directed by Hou Zuxin, sees an unexpected series of events bring together a Chinese reality TV show contestant and a woman already resident in Italy.

The collision of personalities, connections and chemistry between stars Liu Xun and Yao Huang resemble those of “Roman Holiday,” festival organizers suggest.

The film has its world premier on Friday next week, launching a nine-day event that runs until April 22-30.The 2022 selection runs to 72 titles, selected from over 400 submissions, numbers that organizers say, is proof that Asian filmmaking was not halted by the COVID-19 pandemic. “The fear, not unreasonable, given all the halted productions, dismantled sets and release dates announced and then postponed for months, that there wouldn’t be many films to choose from was swept away by the avalanche of films the FEFF received,” organizers said. “The filmmakers of the Far East felt the need to tell stories and above all to reach an audience more urgently than ever,” The selected titles, hailing from ten Asian countries, are organized into a 42-title competition and a non-competitive section of spanning restored classics, documentaries and a best of the best section.

This gives space to Asian films that have managed to get releases  during the pandemic, but which may not have been widely seen outside their home territories, including  Korean hit “Escape From Mogadishu,” animation “Inu-oh,” political thriller “On the Job: The Missing 8,” and Ho Wi-ding’s “Terrorizers.”Organizers say that the coronavirus pandemic has had a.