New York Asian Film Festival Announces First Highlights for 25th Anniversary Edition

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The festival runs from July 10 to July 26 across five New York venues.

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The New York Asian Film Foundation and Film at Lincoln Center (FLC) have revealed the first highlights of the 25th New York Asian Film Festival (NYAFF), an anniversary edition celebrating 25 years of championing the filmmakers, stars, and cinematic movements that have shaped the future of Asian cinema. Check out selected titles from the lineup below.

The festival runs from July 10 to July 26 across five New York venues, including Film at Lincoln Center, SVA Theatre, IFC Center, Anthology Film Archives, and the Korean Cultural Center New York. Screenings at FLC take place July 10–23, and two venues are homecomings: Anthology Film Archives (where the festival began in 2002) on July 16–18, and IFC Center (the festival’s home for four formative editions) on July 13, 15, 16, and 22.

Tickets for Film at Lincoln Center screenings at the New York Asian Film Festival will go on sale on Thursday, June 18, at 2:00 pm ET at filmlinc.org, with early access for FLC and NYAFF Members beginning at 12:00 pm ET. An announcement of the second wave of NYAFF 2026 lands next week, featuring additional premieres, the Centerpiece and Closing Film selections, and award recipients.

Opening Night on July 10 at FLC will feature the North American premiere of Yeon Sang-ho’s Colony, the highly anticipated Korean box-office sensation fresh from its world premiere in Cannes’ Midnight Screenings program—the same section that launched Train to Busan 10 years ago.

The film locks its survivors inside a central Seoul high-rise while a virus tears through the floors quicker than anyone can say “zombie.” Jun Ji-hyun (Gianna Jun) plays the biotech professor who turns reluctant hero, alongside Ji Chang-wook, Koo Kyo-hwan, and Shin Hyun-been. Yeon Sang-ho will be in person on Opening Night ahead of the film’s August 28 theatrical release.

Colony arrives after Korean cinema’s strongest box-office rebound since the pandemic. NYAFF is planning a special presentation of the year’s other biggest hit: The King’s Warden, now the highest-grossing Korean film of all time, starring Yoo Hae-jin (Exhuma) and Park Ji-hoon. One film broke the all-time record. The other got to the top faster than anything else this year. Both are at the 25th edition of NYAFF.

Following Colony’s premiere on July 10, the Opening Night Market returns to the Frieda and Roy Furman Gallery at Film at Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater for an annual gathering of the NYAFF community with live music and Asian street food.

NYAFF’s Opening Weekend Gala returns July 11 at Lincoln Center’s David Rubenstein Atrium, where NYAFF presents the Star Asia Lifetime Achievement Award to Joan Chen . From The Last Emperor and Twin Peaks to her recent work in Dìdi and her turn in Montréal, Ma Belle, Chen has spent four decades widening the range of what an Asian actor can do on American and Asian screens. Sean Wang and Andrew Ahn, her directors on Dìdi and The Wedding Banquet, will present the award. NYAFF presents the New York premiere of Montréal, Ma Belle the following day, July 12.

This year’s program features more than 50 filmmakers, ranging from acclaimed veterans to new voices, who will be on hand for post-screening Q&As and special appearances, giving audiences an insider’s look into the stories behind their work. The 25th edition balances two things that have defined NYAFF: discoveries and massive hits from Asian countries that have been primarily unseen in the U.S. and New York.

Yeon Sang-ho's new series Human Vapor, a reimagining of Toho’s 1960 sci-fi classic, hits Netflix worldwide on July 2, eight days before Yeon lands in New York. He is also the architect of the most influential zombie universe in modern Asian cinema, and NYAFF is showing all of it: Seoul Station (his 2016 animated horror), Train to Busan in a new 4K presentation on its 10th anniversary North American theatrical re-release, Peninsula, and now Colony.

Two of Asian cinema’s fastest-rising actors will attend the 25th edition as Screen International Rising Star honorees, both in person. Hong Kong’s Angela Yuen is a Golden Horse and Hong Kong Film Award Best Actress nominee and lately a fixture of the new Hong Kong cinema, with films opposite Louis Koo and Greg Hsu in the past year alone. Yuen will appear at the North American premieres of Gamer Girls and Afterpiece. Sara Minami appears with two films at the festival this year, Magical Secret Tour and All Greens.

Hong Kong Panorama will return with a lineup that includes Longman Leung’s Cold War 1994, one of the year’s biggest Hong Kong film events. Philip Yung attends in person with Cyclone, 10 years after Port of Call played NYAFF and swept the Hong Kong Film Awards. Jack Ng’s Night King screens in a director’s cut never before shown outside of Hong Kong.

Representing a new generation of filmmakers are Keane T.K. Wong’s debut Afterpiece, Amos Why and Frankie Chung’s The Dating Menu, and Joey Wu’s Bird of Paradise. The festival will also present crowd-pleasers and cult classics rarely screened in the U.S., including Pang Ho-cheung’s gleefully dark You Shoot, I Shoot and Johnnie To and Wai Ka-fai’s mahjong comedy Fat Choi Spirit (copresented by Green Tile Social Club).

NYAFF also presents a Filmmaker In Focus series dedicated to Hong Kong director Andrew Lau, who co-directed Infernal Affairs and served as cinematographer on much of Chungking Express. The retrospective features three films: his latest hit The Dumpling Queen, the 1998 fantasy epic The Storm Riders, and the car-racing classic Initial D in a newly restored 20th-anniversary 4K edition.

NYAFF’s Japanese lineup spans murder mysteries, revenge comedies, punk rock history, and nightmare-fueled horror. Tomorowo Taguchi’s Street Kingdom captures the energy and rebellion of Tokyo’s Rockers scene, while a different kind of nail-biting energy surrounds Eisuke Naito’s (Liverleaf) survival thriller Higuma!! The Killer Bear. The horror continues as Koji Shiraishi (Noroi) brings the viral horror phenomenon Kinki to the big screen. As part of NYAFF’s 25th anniversary Rediscoveries program, Takashi Miike’s Ichi the Killer returns, giving audiences another chance to experience one of Japan’s most notorious cult classics.

Korean films in addition to Colony include two films that reckon with the Jeju 4·3 Incident, the 1947–54 massacres in which tens of thousands of Jeju islanders were killed, and which South Korea spent decades unable to speak about: Ha Myung-mi’s period epic Hallan, led by commercial star Kim Hyang-gi, and My Name, veteran Chung Ji-young’s drama of silenced trauma with Yeom Hye-ran (No Other Choice).

Both films carry the support of the Jeju 4·3 Peace Foundation, and they run alongside the festival’s Jeju 4·3 exhibition. My Sassy Girl comes back in 4K, and Journey There, Kim Jin-yu’s drama about grief, music, and reconnection, pairs Kim Hye-ok with Justin H. Min (After Yang, Beef, The Umbrella Academy), a Korean-American actor crossing into Korean-language cinema, who will also appear in person.

Highlights from the Taiwanese lineup include Giddens Ko’s martial arts comedy Kung Fu and Lee Yi-shan’s Golden Horse-winning debut A Dance with Rainbows, as well as I Blew Out the Candles Before Making a Wish starring Kai Ko. Thailand is represented by 4 Tigers, Kongkiat Komesiri’s $100 million expansion of the Khun Pan universe, starring Pee Mak star Mario Maurer.

Also representing Thailand is the Isan folk horror The Undertaker 2, Tha Rae: The Exorcist, Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit’s Human Resource, and Gohan, which unites three filmmakers behind modern Thai cinema’s biggest blockbusters, Chayanop Boonprakob (Friend Zone), Baz Poonpiriya (Bad Genius), and Atta Hemwadee.

The Philippines is represented by two of its most exciting filmmakers: Rafael Manuel’s Sundance-winning debut Filipiñana, a sharp look at class and privilege inside a Manila country club, and star-powered Manila’s Finest, from short film Palme d’Or award winner Raymond Red.

In 10s Across the Borders, Singaporean director Chan Sze-Wei follows three trailblazers of Southeast Asia’s underground ballroom scene from Manila and Bangkok to New York, where Black and Latinx Ballroom culture first took root.

Vietnam brings Leon Le’s Ky Nam Inn, a 35mm drama set in 1985 Saigon, and Tony Bui’s A Life in Cinema, a live cine-concert celebrating the history of Vietnamese filmmaking. From China, NYAFF presents Peng Fei’s Take Off and the Beijing romance Crossing a Dawn, with more titles to be revealed in the next festival announcement.

Photo Credit: Fat Choi Spirit (©2010 Fortune Star Media Limited All Rights Reserved); Gamer Girls (courtesy of Film Movement); Colony (courtesy of Well Go USA Entertainment); Crossing a Dawn (©Momo Pictures); and Montreal, Ma Belle (©Filmoption International)

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_Originally reported by [BroadwayWorld](https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/25th-New-York-Asian-Film-Festival-Highlights-Unveiled-20260610)._