
--
The 5th ANNUAL ASIAN WORLD FILM FESTIVAL (AWFF) announced Festival award winners during the closing night ceremony, November 14, at the ArcLight in Culver City. Almost 70 feature films from 50 participating countries were presented during the nine-day festival that included 25 Oscar Best International Featured Film submissions and/or Golden Globe submitted films. The Awards ceremony, presented to a sold-out audience, was followed by a screening of Japan's Weathering with You and a reception at the Fifty One Chinese Kitchen. The AWFF took place from November 6 - 14 at the ArcLight Culver City Theater. The evening was hosted by actress Nancy Yoon, Co-founder of Asians In LA.
Said Georges Chamchoum, Executive and Program Director of the AWFF: This year's Asian World Film Festival was a huge success and a celebration of the Asian & Asian-American Cinema. We had an enthusiastic response by filmmakers across Asia creating an international window into the talents and visions of Asian filmmakers. Tonights awards represent the very best of the festival and we are proud to spotlight these talented filmmakers. We look forward to continuing to present films which are exciting, original, exceptional and inspiring.
AWFF once again partnered with The Snow Leopard Trust to raise awareness for the endangered snow leopard and its ecosystem in the high mountains of Asia. Snow Leopard Awards were presented by the 2019 AWFF Jury including Ms. Meryem Uzerli (Actress, Germany/Turkey), Jury President; Ms. Guka Omarova (Director, Kazakhstan), Ms. Kieu Chinh (Actress/Producer/Writer from USA/Vietnam), Ms. Sarah Finn (Casting Director, USA), Mr. Jeremy Kagan, (Emmy -winning Director, USA), Ms. Wenting (Ting Ting) Xu (HFPA), Ms. Iris Yamashita (Oscar -nominated Screenwriter).
The 2019 AWFF Award Winners are:
Snow Leopard Audience Award: 1982 (Lebanon), presented by Actress Tiffany Chu and accepted by Director Oualid Mouaness.
1982
Snow Leopard Best Actress Award: Arezoo Ariapoor, Fereshta Afshar, Hasiba Ebrahimi HAVA, MARYAM, AESHA (Afghanistan, Iran), presented by Ting Ting Xu. who also accepted on behalf of the actresses.
Snow Leopard Best Actor Award: Stepan Petrov in The Sun Above Me Never Sets (Yakutia, Russia), presented by actor Kieu Chin and accepted by Irina Engelis, Executive Director of the Yakutsk International Film Festival.
Snow Leopard Jury Award - Best Director: Dito Tsintsadze for Shindisi (Georgia), and accepted by Mr. Tsintsadze
Snow Leopard Special Jury Award: Aurora (Kyrgyzstan), presented by Sarah Finn and accepted by Director Bekzat Pirmatov.
Snow Leopard Best Film Award: The Sun Above Me Never Sets (Yakutia, Russian Federation), presented by Jury President Meryem Uzerli and accepted by Irina Engelis , Executive Director of the Yakutsk International Film Festival.
The Sun Above Me Never Sets
The Murray Weissman Poster Art Award was given to the film Meiduo (China), presented by Peter Kwon and was accepted by Li Zhu.
As previously announced, the AWFF opened with a screening of the new Warner Bros. film JUST MERCY which followed an awards presentation ceremony honoring actress Nancy Kwan (Flower Drum Song/The World of Suzie Wong) with the AWFF Lifetime Achievement Award. In addition, the AWFF American Red Cross/Tiffany Circle Courage to Dream Award was awarded to film director, Lena Kahn. Additional honors were bestowed upon actor Hiroyuki Sanda with the Snow Leopard Outstanding Cinematic Achievement Award, and Tiffany Chu for 2019 SNOW LEOPARD RISING STAR Award.
In addition, the winner of the first Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) Snow Leopard Short Film Award was Kyrgyzstan's Suium Sulaimanova for her film My Friend - My Enemy. Her film was selected from a dozen shorts by new filmmakers from across Asia and she was presented with the $5,000 scholarship award.
Also, in attendance were AWFF's Sadyk Sher-Niyaz (Founder/Chairman), Georges N. Chamchoum (Executive/Programing Director) Asel Sherniyazova (Co-Founder/ Managing Director), Jury President Meryem Uzerli, Tony Chan (Director, The Bravest), Said Faraj (Green Zone), Shun Oguri (Weathering with You), Tomer Oz (The Heart), Hiroki Shirota (The Outsider), Chen Tang (Mulan) Chris Tashima (Under the Blood-Red Sun), Toru Uchikado (Sea of Mirrors), Janet Wu (TV Personality), Takato Yonemoto (Naked Director), among others.
The Asian World Film Festival is proudly sponsored by Aitysh USA, Hollywood Foreign Press Association, Arclight Cinemas, Culver Hotel, City Of Culver City, Communication University of Zhejiang (China), Snow Leopard Trust, AKIpress, CJ Entertainment, Chosun Daily LA, Moredii, MDSUN, Novartizan, WECTAC, Korean Cultural Center LA, Beijing Genki Forest Beverage, Sakura Production USA, Cape, procolo.co, Gabys, Emporium Thai.
ABOUT THE ASIAN WORLD FILM FESTIVAL, NOVEMBER 6 - 14, 2019
The Asian World Film Festival (AWFF), founded by Kyrgyz public figure Sadyk Sher-Niyaz, brings the best of a broad selection of Asian World cinema to Los Angeles to draw greater recognition to the regions wealth of filmmakers and strengthen ties between the Asian and Hollywood film industries. Uniting through cross-cultural collaboration, the Festival champions films from over 50 countries across Asia, spanning from Turkey to Japan and from Russia to India and the Middle East. All films that participate in the Festival will have a unique chance to be guided through the challenging awards season, and showcased for the Motion Picture Academy, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and all Guilds for enhanced exposure, media attention and awards consideration. AWFF is a non-profit organization under Aitysh USA: www.asianworldfilmfest.org
CONNECT WITH AWFF:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AsianWorldFilmFest/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/asianworldff?lang=en
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/asianworld
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
07/10/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, today announced the latest Long-Term Supported (LTS) release of Dalet Flex. Build...
06/09/2026
June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...
28/08/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
28/08/2026
Global media technology company Backlight will showcase its latest innovations across Iconik and Wildmoka live video creation and distribution at IBC2026 (booth...
28/08/2026
Emergent, a developer of browser-based, AI-enhanced content production tools, will present its complete AI-enhanced content production platform at IBC2026, exhi...
28/08/2026
Joseph Bell Announces VFX & Animation World Atlas 2026
Joseph Bell August 28, 2026
0 Comments
Joseph Bell's Visual Effects & Animation World Atlas...
28/08/2026
Paris-Troyes en Champagne Goes Live on France.tv with AVEO
Brie Clayton August 28, 2026
0 Comments
Regional audiovisual company builds broadcastgrade ...
28/08/2026
DHD to Introduce its Third-Generation Audio Mixing Console at IBC 2026
Brie Clayton August 28, 2026
0 Comments
DHD.audio has chosen IBC 2026 as the la...
28/08/2026
Encompass Digital Media and Grass Valley are expanding their collaboration with the launch of Altitude Playout Plus, a software-defined channel origination plat...
28/08/2026
Yospace, the trusted leader in Dynamic Ad Insertion (DAI), has announced the release of its Ad Presentation solution, which enables broadcasters to apply non-li...
28/08/2026
TSL Showcases Reduced Complexity for Control & Monitoring Across IP Workflows at IBC2026
New TSL Hummingbird capabilities including Dante control routing, toge...
28/08/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
28/08/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
28/08/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
28/08/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
28/08/2026
GlobalM and Lamhas Satellite Services today announced a new agreement that will see GlobalMs GMX technology deployed as part of Lamhas expanding managed IP broa...
28/08/2026
Integrated 25GbE Connectivity Delivers UHD Video Directly to Up to Two Monitors, Eliminates External Gateways, and Supports SMPTE ST 2022-7 Network-Path Protect...
28/08/2026
Interactive Ask Me Anything sessions will connect broadcasters and technology providers with the experts developing a practical, interoperable roadmap for sof...
28/08/2026
At IBC2026, TAG will show sub-2-frame latency and 800 Gbps of aggregate scale for uncompressed ST 2110 monitoring in software, live MXL interoperability with pa...
28/08/2026
SportsBox, BHV's Ultra-Compact 4K Remote Switcher, Moves from Development to Production at IBC 2026
SportsBox brings flexibility without compromise to high...
28/08/2026
Lutz Rathmann named CEO of Riedel Communications Anthony Zuyderhoff to lead unified customer-facing organization as CCO
Riedel Communications is strengthenin...
28/08/2026
LA JOLLA, CA-Scripps Research has established the Pete Schultz Fund for Innovati...
28/08/2026
LA JOLLA, CA-Chemical structures called cyclopropanols are among the most useful...
27/08/2026
ESPN and Disney are launching College Football Saturdays, adding two college football games per week to Disney for U.S. subscribers as part of their existing ...
27/08/2026
Zixi will exhibit at IBC2026 (Hall 5, Stand 5.A76, RAI Amsterdam, September 11-14), demonstrating the Zixi Platform and the latest release of Zixi Broadcaster, ...
27/08/2026
NDI has announced that its ecosystem has surpassed 1.2 million NDI-enabled hardware nodes worldwide, spanning products from more than 200 hardware brands across...
27/08/2026
Clear-Com conducted a pre-launch field trial of FreeSpeak Cell during Carnival 2026 in Rio de Janeiro, in partnership with Brazilian systems integrator Savana C...
27/08/2026
BHV returns to IBC 2026 with an important milestone for its own SportsBox: the broadcast industry's smallest remote vision mixer and format processor has mo...
27/08/2026
TOGETHXR and Snapchat have announced the second cohort of their Snap the Gap content creator program, welcoming nine athletes as Snap Stars. The program provide...
27/08/2026
MediaKind has announced that CNBC UK has selected Beam to modernize its contribution and distribution infrastructure for live broadcast operations. The deployme...
27/08/2026
Monitor engineer Chris Dwight has deployed Sennheiser's Spectera wideband bi...
27/08/2026
Telestream has announced an expansion of its UP cloud-native platform, adding capabilities for orchestrating Telestream services, third-party technologies, and ...
27/08/2026
Swerve TV has signed a multi-year partnership with GLORY Kickboxing, bringing live GLORY events and library programming to Swerve Combat, Swerve TV's free a...
27/08/2026
Dalet has announced a new integrated content experience with Agence France-Presse (AFP) in Dalet Flex, designed to bring AFP's editorial metadata into the p...
27/08/2026
Grass Valley will demonstrate an integrated live production environment at IBC2026 (Booth 9.A01, RAI Amsterdam, September 11-14), combining K-Frame, Maverik X, ...
27/08/2026
The National Women's Soccer League and Roku have announced an expanded partnership, with the Roku Sports Channel becoming the exclusive streaming home of ei...
27/08/2026
FuboTV has announced the launch of ACC Network Extra (ACCNX) and SEC Network (SECN ) on the Fubo streaming service at no additional cost to subscribers with En...
27/08/2026
Sports marketers have entered the experiential age. Today, sports teams, leagues, and venues are increasingly using immersive interactions and real world events...
27/08/2026
MultiDyne will introduce the MDoG-8800 at IBC2026 (Stand 11.C12, RAI Amsterdam, September 11-14), extending its openGear portfolio with a high-density fiber tra...
27/08/2026
The Joint Task Force on the Dynamic Media Facility (JT-DMF), an initiative of AMWA and the EBU, will host a series of informal Ask Me Anything sessions during...
27/08/2026
Homestream, a mobile app that automatically syncs a team's local radio broad...
27/08/2026
A packager for TNT Sports, Kwokman Productions is on hand for the unique event w...
27/08/2026
After more than 3,000 games, five members of YES Network's original staff re...
27/08/2026
Physical modelling orchestral instrument announced
Following their recent cryptic hints, Dreamtonics have officially revealed the latest addition to their s...
27/08/2026
M5 Ultra-equipped Studio most powerful Mac to date
Apple have just announced a design refresh which they say makes the Mac mini fiercer and more versatil...
27/08/2026
Sampler receivers major upgrades
Bitwig's latest DAW update brings some major changes to the Sampler device, kitting it out with new slicing options, tw...
27/08/2026
Designed specifically for hard-hitting modern bass
Designed specifically for bass-heavy electronic music, the latest plug-in from Arturia aims to offer an a...
27/08/2026
Advertisers gain granular CTV targeting and turnkey reporting across eligible in...
27/08/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...