Hawaii International Film Festival’s centerpiece and gala films

The opening night of the 27TH Annual Louis Vuitton Hawaii International Film Festival’s (HIFF) is Thursday, October 18 at the historic Hawaii Theatre. HIFF is the premier international film event in the Pacific showcasing more than 150 feature films, documentaries, shorts and animations, representing countries from around the world will be showcased. This year’s festival will include new film sections, like EAT, DRINK, FILM! that features movies with a focus on food.

“The Louis Vuitton Hawaii International Film Festival is one of the most relevant international film festivals, leading all others with its discovery and exhibition of Asian and Pacific films and documentaries,” says Executive Director Chuck Boller. “In addition to the great film line-up, we are thrilled with the new film sections that offer festival goers more genre options.”

FILM SYNOPSES:
FLIGHT OF THE RED BALLOON – Hawaii Premiere
(OPENING NIGHT) October 18, 8:00pm Hawaii Theater Center
FRANCE / 2007/ French w/E.S. / 113 min
DIRECTOR: Hsiao-hsien Hou
CAST: Juliette Binoche, Hippolyte Girardot, Simon Iteanu, Fang Song

A mysterious red balloon affectionately follows seven-year-old Simon around Paris. The 1957 short film, LE BALLON ROUGE (THE RED BALLON) by Albert Lammorise, is one of the most loved children films ever. Master Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao-hsien, known for verisimilitude in his Chinese films, has crafted a re-imagining of THE RED BALLOON and infused it with Asian philosophies.



AUGUST RUSH – Hawaii Premiere
(CLOSING NIGHT) October 27, 7:00pm Regal Dole Cannery Cinemas
Closing Night Party following the film on the HAWAII SUPERFERRY
USA / 2007/ English / 100 min
DIRECTOR: Kristen Sheridan
CAST: Freddie Highmore, Keri Russell, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Robin Williams
An Oliver Twist-inspired fable about a young orphan named August Rush, who escapes to the big city in search of his birth parents, a rock musician and cellist (who were separated by the laws of high society). Squired by the "wizard"(Robin Williams), August becomes a successful street musician. Meanwhile, his parents also feel the cosmic pangs of reunification, and are on their own quests for this goal. With faith and music, can people come together and overcome all obstacles?

Centerpiece Films

A THOUSAND YEARS OF GOOD PRAYERS- Hawaii Premeire
October 23, 7:00pm Hawaii Theater Center
USA 2007 | English, Mandarin | 83min
Director: Wayne Wang
Cast: Faye Yu, Henry O, Vida Ghahremani, Pasha Lychnikoff

A THOUSAND YEARS OF GOOD PRAYERS follows Mr. Shi, an older Chinese man who comes to a barren American suburb to visit his recently divorced daughter, Yilan (Faye Yu). She is impatient with his presence, and it gradually leaks out that she is seeing a married man on the sly. Meanwhile, her father strikes up a friendship with an Iranian woman of his own age (Vida Ghahremani), a connection which inspires him to reconcile with his daughter.

DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY (LE SCAPHANDRE ET LE PAPILLON)- Hawaii Premeire
October 24, 7:00pm Regal Dole Cannery Cinemas
USA, France 2007 | English, French | 112min
Director: Julian Schnabel

Cast: Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Seigner, Marie-Josée Croze, Anne Consigny, Patrick Chesnais
Based on the bestselling memoir, LVHIFF's Centerpiece gala is one of the most acclaimed films of the year. At 43, Jean-Dominique Bauby, the rakishly successful and charismatic editor-in-chief of French Elle was a man defined by his passion for life. On December 1995, he suffered a massive stroke and his brain stem was rendered inactive. In these few bewildering moments, his life was forever changed. After lapsing into a coma, he awoke to find himself the victim of a rare "locked-in syndrome" – mentally alert but permanently deprived of movement and speech. The only way he could communicate was by moving his left eye. These movements and blinking a code representing letters of the alphabet became his sole means of expression. Slowly and painstakingly, words, sentences, paragraphs and finally an affecting and life-affirming memoir emerged. Like its cinema predecessors MY LEFT FOOT and THE SEA INSIDE, the film captures the power of human resolve.

Gala

APPLESEED EX MACHINA- International Premeire
October 26, 7:15pm Regal Dole Cannery Cinemas
Japan 2007 | Japanese | 105min
Director: Shinji Aramaki
Cast: Ai Kobayashi, Gara Takashima, Kouichi Yamadera, Yuuji Kishi, Kuwata Kong
Deunan and Briareos are partners, lovers, and members of ES.W.A.T., the elite special forces serving the city-nation of Olmpus. The two fighters find their relationship tested in a new way by when Tereus, an experimental Bioroid, who looks and acts just like Briareos joins the force. While sorting out her feelings for both men, Deunan must contend with a mysterious cabal of scientistes intent on imposing their own version of world peace upon the peoples of the world.

BLOOD BROTHERS (TIAN TANG KOU)- US Premeire
October 20, 6:30pm regal Dole Cannery Cinemas
Taiwan, Hong Kong 2007 | Mandarin | 95min
Director: Alexi Tan
Cast: Ye Liu, Daniel Wu, Chen Chang, Qi Shu, Tony Yang

This Chinese, Taiwanese and Hong Kong co-production stars Daniel Wu, Chang Chen, Shu Qi, Liu Ye, Tony Yang, Sun Honglei and Lulu Li. It is an action-packed thriller with an epic range. Inspired by John Woo’s masterpiece BULLET IN THE HEAD (Die xue jie tou, 1990), it is a gripping story of a group of friends and the loss of their innocence in 1930s Shanghai, a city inhabited by lords of war, politicians, concubines and gangsters.

JELLYFISH (MEDUZOT)- Hawaii Premeire
October 25, 7:30pm Regal Dole Cannery Cinemas; October 26, 4:15pm Regal Dole Cannery Cinemas
France, Israel 2007 | French, Hebrew | 78min
Director: Shira Geffen, Etgar Keret
Cast: Sarah Adler, Tsipor Aizen, Bruria Albek

The story of three very different Tel Aviv women whose intersecting stories weave an unlikely portrait of modern Israeli life. Batya, a catering waitress, takes in a child abandoned at a local beach. Keren, a bride who breaks her leg escaping a locked toilet stall, ruins her chance at a dream Caribbean honeymoon. Also attending the event is Joy, a non Hebrew-speaking domestic worker who has guiltily left her son behind in her native Philippines.

LOVE AND HONOR (BUSHI NO ICHIBUN)- Hawaii Premeire
October 21, 7:00pm Regal Dole Cannery Cinemas; October 24, 2:30pm Regal Dole Cannery Cinemas
Japan 2006 | Japanese | 122min
Director: Yoji Yamada
Cast: Takuya Kimura, Rei Dan, Mitsugoro Bando, Takashi Sasano, Kaori Momoi

Winning big at the box office and with critics, LOVE AND HONOR is the finest of Yoji Yamada’s samurai trilogy. When young samurai Mimura Shinnojo loses his eyesight, his happy life with loving wife Kayo deteriorates. However, he is able to maintian his rank and income with the help of captain Shimada Toya...but at what price? As rumors begin to spread, Shinnojo becomes increasingly troubled that he may be losing his wife and honor to another man.

MY BROTHER IS AN ONLY CHILD (MIO FRATELLO E FIGLIO UNICO)- Hawaii Premeire
October 19, 8:30pm Regal Dole Cannery Cinemas; October 21, 3:45pm Regal Dole Cannery Cinemas
Italy, France 2007 | Italian | 99min
Director: Daniele Luchetti
Cast: Elio Germano, Riccardo Scamarcio, Riccardo Scamarcio, Alba Rohrwacher, Angela Finocchiaro, Vittorio Emanuele Propizio

Two dramatically opposite Italian brothers, Accio, an irritable impulsive trouble-maker and Manrico, his handsome and charming brother, come of age in the politically charged 1960s and 70s. As they compete for the love of a woman and battle political wits, they come to realize they are much more alike than they every imagined.
RAILS AND TIES
October 24, 6:30pm Regal Dole Cannery Cinemas
USA 2007 | English | 35mm | 96min
Director: Alison Eastwood
Cast: Marcia Gay Harden, Miles Heizer, Kevin Bacon

On a beautiful stretch of California coastline, a suicidal mother parks her car on a railroad crossing and awaits the arrival of a speeding train, the sleek and unstoppable Coastal Starlight. Thus begins the story of two families in physical, emotional and psychological collision of the victim's relatives and of the train engineer (Kevin Bacon) who couldn't possibly have stopped time. RAILS AND TIES is Alison Eastwood’s stunning directorial debut.

THE KITE RUNNER- Hawaii Premeire
October 20, 6:45pm Regal Dole Cannery Cinemas
USA 2007 | English | 122min
Director: Marc Forster
Cast: Shaun Toub, Sa’d Taghmaoui, Atossa Leoni, Khalid Abdalla, Navid Negahban

A powerful tale of friendship, family, devastating mistakes and redeeming love. It follows two childhood best friends, Amir and Hassan, who are about to be torn apart forever. One boy’s fearful act of betrayal will set in motion a terrible catastrophe …and an epic quest for redemption. After 20 years of living in America, Amir returns to a perilous Afghanistan under the Taliban’s iron-fisted rule, to take one last daring chance to set things right.

THE SAVAGES- Hawaii Premeire
October 25, 7:00pm Regal Dole Cannery Cinemas
USA 2007 | English | 113min
Director: Tamara Jenkins
Cast: Philip Bosco, Peter Friedman, Gbenga Akinnagbem, Cara Seymour

In the consummately executed, irreverent drama THE SAVAGES, Tamara Jenkins succeeds in making filmgoers simultaneously laugh and cry. In this “coming-of-middle-age” story, she has captured all the pain and misgivings that befall a pair of adult siblings, suddenly plucked from their self-absorbed lives and forced to care for a parent who never much bothered to care for them, and transformed what should make viewers extremely uncomfortable into a brilliantly humane examination of family dynamics.