In the middle of the 1990s, two major new figures emerged in Asia's cinema. From Japan came Kore-eda Hirokazu from a background in contemplative documentary, usually devoting his attention to individuals involved in some personal struggle. From the city of Fengyang in China's Shanxi province came Jia Zhangke, who, although a graduate of China's film school, seemed to arrive fully formed out of that provincial nowhere. His début, Xiao Wu, won prize after prize after its première at Berlin in 1998. The filmmakers' careers in fact took trajectories with some similarity, both winning Vancouver's Dragons and Tigers competition for new directors from East Asia, and now both are accepted almost routinely into the world's A-list festivals.

Kore-eda and Jia seem to have also maintained a similar pace ever since, making a new feature every couple of years, and both are now funded in part by major international distributors. Both explore different ways of telling their stories with each new film.

Kore-eda's two recent features have been marked by their engagement with classical Japanese genres. Hana (BIFF 2007) was the director's first period piece, a costume drama incorporating elements of the tale of the forty-seven ronin into a gentle, Renoiresque romantic comedy about a soulful but incompetent samurai not desperately seeking revenge for his father's death. Still Walking sets itself squarely in a family home, and its nods to the master Yasujiro Ozu are plain to see. At the same time, the family problems are more up to the minute, more enigmatic and contemporary. Kore-eda also holds back more than a bit of his story, all the better to slowly reveal something rather enlightening about this group as they teeter round the edge of dysfunction. His family observes every sense of good manners, nods towards every tradition, notes every breakdown of civility, discusses every petty insult. 

For those contemplating tracking their way through the modern Asian cinema at this year's BIFF, these young masters are set to provide further highlights to already outstanding careers. Attention should also be given to a young director just embarking on the road. In her second feature film, the Korean-born So Yong Kim returned to her native land to make Treeless Mountain, a film with echoes back to her own childhood, when she came alone to America, but which also shines some light on modern South Korea. A mother abandoned by her husband can't make ends meet to support her children. She leaves them with her errant husband's sister, promising to return. The sister turns out to be a grumpy, petty, penny-pinching alcoholic, and the kids retreat into a fantasy blown up out of the mother's casual parting words.

First note has to be made of the exactitude of observation here. Childhood is explored with a rare intensity. It's fuelled by the extreme concentration of the camera on the children, excluding the background and capturing them in quite unaffected pose. It tracks two young lives, apparently abandoned and unloved but finally, and very emotionally for the viewer, secure.

So Yong Kim has made a new home in the US. She returned to Korea to make this movie. She and her husband, the director Bradley Rust Gray, work together on their projects from their home in Brooklyn. All that makes you wonder whether Treeless Mountain may well be her swansong to the land of her birth. If that is the case then it is even more remarkable.

By Geoff Gardner