Wedding Thriller ‘Pai Kau’ to Get International Premiere at Osaka Asian Film Festival
Jakarta. Sidi Saleh’s latest feature film "Pai Kau" is set for an international premiere at the Osaka Asian Film Festival from March 9 to 18.
It will be screened as part of the festival's "New Action! Southeast Asia" program, which puts a spotlight on avant-garde Southeast Asian Cinema.
Pai Kau's co-producer and lead actress Irina Chiu said she hopes the Osaka festival can expose the film to new audiences.
"We're happy that the festival's programmers appreciate our work so we can have our international premiere in Japan. As a producer, I'm always happy when my film gets to meet a new audience," she said.
The festival’s program director Teruoka Sozo praised Pai Kau for being "entertaining, and at the same time artistic."
The film tells the story of a wedding between Lucy (Irina Chiu) and Edy (Anthony Xie). All the merriment turns into terror when Edy’s ex, Siska (Ineke Valentina), arrives at the wedding to sabotage it.
The characters in Pai Kau are all Chinese-Indonesians and occasionally speak Mandarin.
Nishi Yoshimi, an associate professor in Southeast Asian Studies at Kyoto University, said about the movie, "Pai Kau brings fresh air to Indonesian cinema with its liberal use of Mandarin. It shows that Indonesia is a meeting point for world cultures where new philosophies thrive. Viewers will be surprised at how big the film’s ambition is."
The film was shown on 37 screens in Indonesia last Thursday (08/02), but the number dropped to 18 screens the next day.
In Jakarta, it is now playing only at selected cinemas in the northern and western parts of the city.
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