Culver City, Calif. — November 11, 2025
The camera flashes hit like lightning.
Sharp. Relentless. Electric. They sliced through the November dusk outside the Culver Theatre, illuminating faces in bursts — international filmmakers, producers, cultural delegates swept onto the red carpet for the opening night of the Asian World Film Festival 2025 on Nov. 11th. With each strobe, silhouettes sharpened against the theater’s golden marquee, and for a moment the whole scene felt suspended between worlds: Los Angeles and Seoul, Hollywood and Mumbai — the stories Asia has always told and the ones the world is only now beginning to hear.
Running through Nov. 20, the festival features more than 70 films from over 30 Asian countries and regions, including 20 official submissions for the Academy Awards’ international feature category.
This year’s lineup blends high-profile titles with quieter regional discoveries, offering audiences a mix of festival-season standouts and works rarely screened in the U.S. The opening film, South Korea’s “No Other Choice,” leads a program that also highlights Southeast Asian cinema and introduces a “Focus on Taiwan” section, showcasing the island’s Oscar entry “Left-Handed Girl” alongside several emerging voices from the region.
Beyond its opening selections, this year’s festival spotlights several acclaimed and culturally resonant titles. Mongolia’s “If Only I Could Hibernate,” a Cannes premiere centered on a teenage boy navigating poverty and academic ambition, reflects the growing international recognition of Central Asian cinema.
Cambodia’s “Darkness of the Night,” which examines generational trauma following the Khmer Rouge era, brought several members of the Cambodian delegation to the carpet, including a royal family representative who spoke briefly with reporters.
Many of these films deal directly with themes of displacement, cultural memory, political conflict and cross-border identity: subjects that have shaped Asian filmmaking in recent years and continue to resonate with diaspora audiences in Los Angeles.
Among the arrivals: representatives from Sony Pictures Television — Distribution, exchanging business cards near the step-and-repeat banner. A member of the Cambodian royal family, wrapped in traditional silk that caught the light with every movement, paused for photographers. Directors from across East, South, and Southeast Asia clustered in animated circles, code-switching mid-sentence, their gestures shifting as fluidly as their languages.
As the crowd thickened near the entrance, the festival’s purpose came into focus. AWFF has long positioned itself as a platform for expanding how Asian narratives are understood — challenging stereotypes, bridging linguistic borders and elevating voices that have gone unheard. This year’s opening night embodied that mission through the diversity of its guests and the collective sense of presence that filled the space.
For many attendees, visibility carried weight. For others, hope. For Asian storytellers working across continents, it represented a continuation of an evolving conversation around belonging and the global appetite for nuanced cultural narratives.
Between the camera shutters and the constant motion, the festival’s Executive Director, Georges N. Chamchoum, paused for a brief interview: “Cinema is the bridge between cultures. Asia still has stories the world hasn’t heard.”
Guests moved from camera to camera, stopping only long enough to answer a question before being guided toward the theater entrance.
Yet within the pace, quieter moments surfaced. A filmmaker spoke about memory, his voice softening to a near whisper. A producer mentioned the word “diaspora” and briefly looked away, as if the weight of it resisted explanation. The sight of Southeast Asian narratives claiming space on an American red carpet carried its own silent significance.
As opening night drew to a close and the final guests disappeared inside, the flashes slowed, then stopped. What lingered was not the noise of the carpet, but the charge of recognition: Asian stories waiting to be told, and those stories finally beginning to be heard.
The momentum of the evening hadn’t faded; it had simply moved inside, onto the screen.