ACF - Asian Cinema Fund

2010 Post-Production Fund

LIST Year without a Summer

Synopsis

Azam comes back to his village, to look for his childhood best friend, Ali. Ali and his wife Minah are overjoyed to meet this long lost friend, who had left the village thirty years ago. They had been following Azam’s news since he became a famous singer, although now Azam is over his peak. Ali and Minah invite Azam to their house. At night, Ali asks Azam to go out fishing at the sea. They visit the Pulau Ular island. The whole night, the three of them talk about love, marriage, village folklore, mystic creatures, and the wildboar hunting once upon a time. As the night is ending, Minah demonstrates that she could hold her breath underwater for 3 minutes. Azam tries to do the same, but he never appears again...

Director's Note

I found the title Year without A Summer from Wikipedia. It was year 1816, and there was no summer in that year. In some places in America and China, there were even snowfalls during summer. I can imagine the climate abnormalities must have stirred a sense of doom day at that time. The crops died, the sky was often orange tinted, famines and war broke out everywhere... the fear, and the confusion. Many years later, scientists believe that the climate abnormalities were mainly caused by the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia of 1815. My story is not about volcano eruption, nor climate abnormalities. My story is about how people often live, without knowing much about what happened to them. In a way, my film is about history of sadness.

Festivals

2010 Busan International Film Festival - A Window on Asian Cinema
2010 Tokyo FILMeX Festival - Competition
2011 International Film Festival Rotterdam - Return of the Tiger
2011 Hong Kong International Film Festival - Indie Power
2011 International Women’s Film Festival in Seoul
2011 Buenos Aires International Independent Film Festival - Jury Special Mention
2011 San Francisco International Film Festival
2011 Taipei Film Festival

Still Cut

LIST