Ranked: the 12 best Asian films of 2023, from Concrete Utopia to Hidden Blade and Godzilla Minus One

Unspooling like a Southeast Asian response to Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, Dagatan’s film is a visually ravishing supernatural treat brimming with ancient magic.

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11. 24 Hours With Gaspar

It is a rare treat when a science fiction movie emerges from Southeast Asia’s independent film scene, and even rarer when it proves as good as Yosep Anggi Noen’s cyberpunk detective thriller.

Rena Rahadian plays the titular motorbike-riding sleuth with a weak heart who has just 24 hours to take down a notorious criminal and hopefully unveil the truth behind his childhood sweetheart’s disappearance.

Oozing with style, ambition and laudable optimism, this is the kind of bold swing that happens all too rarely in Asian filmmaking, and thoroughly deserves our support.

10. Perfect Days

Wim Wenders fashioned an absorbing and enigmatic drama, conceived in collaboration with the Tokyo Toilet Project, in which 16 designers from around the world created innovative, architecturally inspiring public conveniences around the Japanese capital’s Shibuya district.

Koji Yakusho was named best actor at Cannes for his thoughtful portrayal of a solitary toilet cleaner who nurtures a love for Western music, literature, photography and nature.

Raising more questions than it answers, the film nevertheless succeeds in championing the nobility of the mundane while showcasing Tokyo’s fascinating array of newly commissioned public toilets. Read our review

9. Back Home

First-time director Nate Tse Ka-ki’s eerily unsettling ghost story is one of the most keenly observed commentaries on Hong Kong’s fast-evolving status.

Anson Kong Ip-sang, a member of Hong Kong boy band phenomenon Mirror, plays a troubled young man who returns to the city after years living overseas.

Struggling to recognise his homeland and haunted by unsettling childhood memories, he returns to his old flat, where the building’s residents give him a creepy homecoming.

Influenced by the likes of Get Out and Midsommar as well as traditional Chinese ghost stories, Tse’s confident debut hints at a bright future for genre filmmaking in Hong Kong. Read our review

8. Concrete Utopia

In the wake of a massive earthquake, only one apartment building remains standing. For survivors in the surrounding area it becomes a beacon of hope, but for the residents it must be fiercely protected.

Um Tae-hwa’s effects-laden disaster movie serves as a scathing allegory of South Koreans’ growing obsession with property and status.

At the centre of his star-studded cast, Lee Byung-hun gives his best performance in years as a mysterious stranger who rises from the rubble to become dubious leader of the estate’s inundated population.

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7. Evil Does Not Exist

Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s follow-up to his Oscar-winning Drive My Car is a sombre and deceptively chilling affair about the slow, inevitable encroachment of urban sprawl upon Japan’s idyllic countryside.

Hitoshi Omika is brilliant as the jack of all trades in a small, self-sufficient community that has been targeted as the site for a glamorous new campsite for urban tourists.

6. Hidden Blade

Of all Tony Leung Chiu-wai’s big-ticket performances in 2023, his turn as a morally conflicted Shanghai intelligence director in Cheng Er’s labyrinthine spy thriller was the most compelling.

Set during the Japanese occupation and boasting some of the year’s most sumptuous production design, this delightfully noirish indulgence succeeds as a loving ode to the cloak-and-dagger adventures of yesteryear.

The film also boasts a star-making turn from rising heartthrob Wang Yibo, as a young officer under Leung’s command who discovers that his former fiancée (Zhang Jingyi) is now part of the resistance. Read our review

5. Killing Romance

One of the year’s most singular cinematic experiences, Lee Won-suk’s genre-bending comedy musical delivered a welcome shot of playful silliness, even as it skewered a number of serious issues.

Lee Hanee stars as a celebrity who becomes trapped in an abusive relationship and calls upon her small yet devoted fan base to save her, but it is Lee Sun-kyun who steals the show as the film’s grotesquely over-the-top pantomime villain.

4. In Broad Daylight

Jennifer Yu Heung-ying cements her position as one of Hong Kong’s most compelling and versatile leading ladies with her role as a jaded and world-weary newspaper reporter who uncovers a shocking scandal involving negligence, exploitation and abuse at a private care home.

Based on real events, and emblematic of a culture in which the elderly and disabled are all too readily disrespected and discarded, Lawrence Kan Kwan-chun’s riveting drama is one of the most accomplished Hong Kong films in recent memory.

It boasts memorable turns from a rich ensemble cast, including David Chiang Da-wei, Bowie Lam Bo-yee and Rachel Leung Yung-ting. Read our review

3. Tiger Stripes

In one of the year’s most electrifying debuts, director Amanda Nell Eu turns a scathing critique of Malaysia’s suffocating patriarchy into a red-blooded body-horror fable, as a 12-year-old girl from a conservative rural community faces a torrent of abusive body shaming from her classmates, teachers and mother when her body begins to change.

Dexterously flitting back and forth between social commentary and grotesque monster movie, Tiger Stripes confronts the complex entanglement of religion and mythology facing a generation of emboldened and defiant young women. Read our interview with Amanda Nell Eu

2. The First Slam Dunk

Takehiko Inoue’s exhilarating, edge-of-your-seat tour de force combines 3D computer graphics with motion capture technology and traditional hand-drawn animation to transport audiences into the world of the Shohoku High basketball team in a way never experienced before.

Unfolding almost in real time over the course of a single must-win showdown, Inoue’s film not only has some of the most innovative sporting moments ever committed to screen, but also takes us inside the head space of his players as they wrestle with grief, self-doubt and the desire to succeed. Read our review

1. Godzilla Minus One

Incoming director Takashi Yamazaki strikes the perfect balance between affecting period melodrama and dazzling action spectacle, as a band of traumatised World War II survivors, led by Ryunosuke Kamiki’s disgraced kamikaze pilot, are forced to rally together to save their homeland from a seemingly insurmountable threat. Read our review

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