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Following what happened in the US during the last decade or so, the quality of Asian dramas has skyrocketed during the last few years, with a significant surge of talent from cinema towards streaming platforms, with Korea definitely paving the way in the regard, and Japan following. The result is quite impressive to watch, since, frequently, the level of these titles is equal to the one of movies.

Without further ado, here are 20 Asian dramas in random order proving the fact in the most eloquent fashion.

1. Cigarette Girl by Kamila Andini

“Cigarette Girl” is not a typical story of two broken hearts crushed by unfortunate circumstances, a trope over-used in the soap opera format. It also has a bit of history to offer alongside a basic insight into the women's hardships in Indonesia not such long time ago. “Your duty is to clean the house and find yourself a husband...

Winner of Best Film in this year's Metro Manila Film Festival, “Firefly” is equally a fairy tale, a road movie and a family drama, with Zig Dulay combining the genres in mainstream fashion.

Although initially starting with a journalist “interrogating” a successful author regarding the originality of his rather successful book, while the writer fully explains himself, the story moves into his past as a child nicknamed Tonton in 1999. The little boy lived in the slums with his mother and was bullied in school, but found solace in her bedtime stories and particularly the one about the presence of fireflies in a magical cave in the distant Ticao. After a family tragedy, young Tonton decides to find the particular cave, and, in the process, picks up a crew of adult companions, including Louie, Billy and Ericka, all of which find themselves bonding after a fight among them in the bus...

A couple of days ago, Ho Wi Ding, the director of “Pinoy Sunday” made a post on Facebook stating “Many years ago, after watching the premiere of my feature debut Pinoy Sunday, a European programmer warned me that, many years later, I won’t be proud of this film enough to include it in my filmography. Twelve years later, Pinoy Sunday is still in demand, showing in small non-profit venues like schools or film festivals, within Taiwan or abroad. Last year, it was screened in the 48th Seoul Independent Film Festival. Next Wednesday, January 11th, at 8pm, it will be screened again in Oldham Theater of Asian Film Archive. A film without expiry date. Yes. Many years later, I am still proud of Pinoy Sunday.”

The aforementioned comment was actually the instigation for me to watch the film, with the answer in the question of why the European programmer made that comment,...

The lineups for the Mavericks, Discovery, and Tiff Kids parts of the Toronto Film Festival were announced, wrapping up a series of lineup announcements for the Toronto International Film Festival.

With the added films, the festival’s entire slate is now a whopping 393 movies. Two hundred eighty-five of those movies are feature films, of which 143 are world premieres.

The Mavericks portion of the festival includes onstage discussions following the screening of each film. Do I Sound Gay? will be followed by a talk between director David Thorpe and sex-advice guru Dan Savage. Also premiering in that space is The 50 Year Argument,...

Bill Murray is coming to Toronto folks. Actually, the film he stars in (Theodore Melfi’s St. Vincent) is having its official World Premiere launch at the jaw-dropping 285 feature film 2014 Tiff line-up. In the final batch of items we finally get the confirmation that 2014′s Palme d’Or Winner Winter Sleep (which gets added along with a trio of others to the Masters Programme) will show, and Tomm Moore’s highly anticipated Song of the Sea (among the four item line-up for Tiff Kids) also lands. Worth mentioning are the sprinkling of add-ons to the various other sections (Marjane Satrapi’s Sundance preemed The Voices, Matt Shakman’s Cut Bank and the world preem of Danis Tanovic’s Tigers) with a Studio Ghibli docu item being fitted into the Tiff Docs, but it is the Discovery Programme that finally takes shape.

The “up-and-comers” include Berlin Film Fest (and future Nyff...