ocal youth-focused NGO has partnered with a Dutch organization to facilitate Lebanese-Dutch youth conversations and cultural awareness through film. The international exchange, started by Unite Lebanon Youth Project and Dutch NGO Open Roads Media, also aims to spark introspection, driving Lebanese youth to face the complexities within their own society.

Since 2014, the Crosscut Asia non-competition category has been organized to increase Japan's cultural interaction with other countries in Asia. The category helps to strengthen the filmmakers network across Asia and their exchange with journalists and film critics. Each year, the festival focuses on one country. This year the festival is celebrating "Colorful Indonesia."

he challenges will always be there. When you look at nations like the US and China, they still have political challenges. [...] as a resilient South Africa, are going through that phase. We are a developing nation that is faced with many challenges, but instead of being overwhelmed and being overtaken by this negativity, Brand SA has chosen to work with people who actually want to promote the good news. 

Pakistan is a land of unlimited talent and rich artistic tradition. [...] Pakistani entertainment at its current peak, have a tendency to lend a soft power status to the country. As one of finest cultural imports of Pakistan, efforts must be made to promote such creativity and talent.

A filmmaker has teamed up with a friend she met in high school in Brooklyn Heights to produce a portrait of a girls’ school in Anupshahr, India, a community that doesn’t believe in educating women. “Break the Branch,” by director Samantha Cornwell, filmed in conjunction with music and theatre teacher Melanie Closs, is described as a “lyrical, ethereal portrait of a rural Indian girls’ school in lush, sensuous color.”

The colorful spectacle of pandas, martial arts and valiant heroes is, of course, far from the reality in China today, but the version of a Chinese fantasy world in which the Kung Fu Panda movies live has proved very appealing to audiences both in China and globally. 

Kabali was released in 8000-10,000 screens across the world. That scale is astonishing given that India’s soft power has largely been powered by the popularity of Hindi cinema and Bollywood.