Asia Pacific Screen Awards: Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s ‘Evil Does Not Exist’ Leads Nominations & First Round Winners Announced

Japanese filmmaker Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s latest feature, Evil Does Not Exist, leads this year’s Asia Pacific Screen Awards (APSA) with four nods, including the gong for Best Film. 

Hamaguchi’s nominations haul includes Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Cinematography for Yoshio Kitagawa. The film is Hamaguchi’s first film since his Oscar-winning Drive My Car and debuted at this year’s Venice Film Festival. The pic follows Takumi and his daughter Hana, who live in Mizubiki Village, close to Tokyo. Like generations before them, they live a modest life according to the cycles and order of nature. A plan to construct a glamping site near Takumi’s house, offering city residents a comfortable “escape” to nature, threatens to endanger the ecological balance of the area and the local people’s way of life.  

Also nominated in the Best Film category are Wim Wenders’s Perfect Days, Snow Leopard by Pema Tseden, Citizen Saint by Tinatin Kajrishvili, andAisultan Seit’s Qas. Tseden’s Snow Leopardtrails Hamaguchi with three overall nominations, including Best Screenplay, and Best Performance for Jinpa. 

Elsewhere, Celine Song is nominated in the Best Director category for her debut feature,Past Lives. Song is nominated alongside Darkhan Tulegenov for Brothers (Bratya, Kazakhstan), Liang Ming for Carefree Days (Xiao yao you, People’s Republic of China), and Rima Das for Tora’s Husband (India).

Now in its second year, the ungendered Best Performance Award has five nominees. The nominees are Koji Yakusho for his role in Perfect Days, Mihaya Shirata for her role in Last Shadow at First Light, Mouna Hawa for Inshallah a Boy, and Zhou Dongyu for The Breaking Ice (Ran dong, People’s Republic of China), alongside Jinpa for Snow Leopard.

In the first round of winners at this year’s APSA’s, Rapture (Rimdogittanga), directed by Dominic Megam, has picked up the Cultural Diversity Award. A rare co-production between India and China, the Garo-language pic explores the politics of fear in a north-east Indian village, where the community fears kidnapping and the church prophesizes a period of apocalyptic darkness. 

The APSA Young Cinema Award was picked up by Phạm Thiên Ân for his