Schedule for the 16th Kota Kinabalu International Film Festival
The Kota Kinabalu International Film Festival is turning 16!
This year's festival invites you to experience films that explore, provoke, and connect. Unlike mainstream blockbusters, these films are driven by ideas, not profits, and they go deeper.
The screenings offer a powerful mix of stories from 11 countries, including family tensions, cultural memory, migration, deafness, and exploding dryers.
KKIFF 2025 promises to be a festival full of imagination, reflection, and discovery.
All screenings start at the scheduled times. Please arrive at least 20 minutes before the start.
Saturday 2 August 2025, 7.30pm
A Better Place
After her mother abandons her at a bus stop in Seoul, seven-year-old Jia has nowhere to go. As night falls, she sees a light from a stranger: an undocumented South Asian immigrant who got stuck in South Korea after unsuccessfully attempting "Donkey Flight" (an illegal immigration process). The unlikely pair survives the night by forming an unusual bond and making brave, and sometimes difficult, choices.
Chicken For Linda / Linda veut du poulet
Paulette feels guilty after unjustly punishing her daughter Linda and would do anything to make it up to her. Linda immediately asks for a meal of chicken with peppers, which reminds her of the dish her father used to make. But with shopkeepers on strike all across town and pushing people into the streets, this innocent request quickly leads to an outrageous series of events that spirals out of control, as Paulette does everything she can to keep her promise and find a chicken for Linda – even though she doesn't know how to cook!
Sunday 3 August 2025, 7.30pm
North
As the New Year approaches and Grandpa's health condition worsens, Pingping returns to their small village in Heilongjiang with Baolai, hoping to bring the old man back to Hainan. The father and daughter, caught in the conflict of old and new beliefs, never manage to reach an agreement. In the process of preparing to sell the father's only house, Pingping quietly abandons the idea, while Grandpa gradually comes to understand his child's perspective.
Family Album / Temas Propios
Uruguay's selection for the Oscars in 2024, Family Album is a heartfelt comedy that navigates the complexities of family dynamics and the pursuit of dreams. At its core are Manuel, an 18-year-old grappling with a vocational crisis, and César, his 45-year-old father, who refuses to grow up after his separation. When César and Manuel decide to form a band, they face generational clashes that threaten their musical aspirations. Alongside Virginia, an overwhelmed mother, and Agustín, a rebellious teenager, the film explores the chaotic journey of adulthood, parent-child relationships, and the world of rock music.
Monday 4 August 2025, 7.30pm
Hide & Seek
A game of hide and seek ends only when the seeker catches someone. Woojin (8 years old, male), at an age when he should yearn for the purity of the world of childhood, begins a true game of hide and seek, starting with parents who no longer search for him.
Doubles Match
Double Match tells the passionate story of two young table tennis players who strive to reach the top and become top table tennis players in international competitions.
Hu Guan-yu is passionate about table tennis. He trains with his best friend Huang Xuan, hoping to make the Olympic national team. When a new coach arrives, the team's atmosphere shifts, and they gradually drift apart. A year later, Guan-yu wins the junior national team qualifier. His opponent in the final: Huang Xuan.
Tuesday 5 August 2025, 7.30pm
Bajau Laut - the sea is our home
"Their stilt houses are burnt down, their boats destroyed: indigenous people like the sea nomads in Malaysia are denied citizenship and passports as they are disenfranchised as stateless people. But centuries of history and the graves of their ancestors on the Malaysian islands are proof of their roots.
As stateless people, the children of the sea nomads are not allowed to attend state schools, so artists and activists have founded schools in the stilt villages. But the students are repeatedly arrested and harassed."
– Joo Peter, director of the film (April 17, 2025)
The trailer spotlights the fate of the sea nomad village Tetagan, which got totally erased by authorities June 2024.
Forms Of Forgetting
Five years after the death of his grandmother, Joaquin returns to their old, abandoned, soon to be torn down house. As he gathers the remaining belongings to move out, he notices the camcorder that he inherited from his grandmother was missing.
Headhunters Of Borneo / Kopfjäger von Borneo
This digitally-restored film comes with English subtitles. Kopfjäger von Borneo (Headhunters Of Borneo) is an early ethnographic feature film shot in the 1930s in Indonesia. It is a half-fictional documentary. The story is based on an old local legend, enacted by natives, and involves a love story between a young woman and a young man of incompatible social classes. It's Romeo and Juliet set among the Iban in the 1930s!
Wednesday 6 August 2025, 7.30pm
C-Grade SF Movie
Scoffing at prophecies of alien invasion, it wasn't a grand space fleet that drove humanity to the brink of extinction. It was the cataclysm of Earth itself – skies choked with volcanic ash, mutant viruses running rampant – and the AI's ruthless biochip surveillance network strangling survivors in ruined cities.
Beep Beep
When her parcel is at risk of being returned to its seller, Fely, an inconsiderate, middle-aged nurse, rushes home to receive it. She rides a jeep in what is seemingly a mundane day until she meets Caloy, an intergalactic scout with a mission to make the multiverse a better place. As Fely's selfish attitude clashes with Caloy's mission, her ordinary ride home becomes an extraordinary trip to the multiverse.
The Nose Knows: Foreignness And Fortune In China
What can noses tell us Chinese identity, and the PRC's increasingly important place in the world? There are so many different kinds of noses. But what can they tell us? Can they be political?
Throughout Chinese history, noses have been used to separate Chinese people from foreigners.
In the present day, they can also be the key to changing your destiny. If we know more about noses, perhaps we can better understand how China sees itself and its increasingly important place in the world.
Paper Players' War
A Blue Soldier and a Yellow Soldier play a board game trying to outwit each other, struggling for control over a piece of land. The Farmer who belongs to the land is not allowed to play and must pick a side. As the fighting escalates, what side does she choose?
If You Were To Choose
In the final days of the Japanese occupation in 1945 Philippines, a 21 year old Filipino farmer named Julio joins a Pro-Japanese Militant group to provide for his ailing father, until he finds a 20 year old anti-Japanese insurgent named Maria, who has come to seek shelter in his house. With the Japanese grip tightening, Julio must choose between saving his family or Maria to survive the end of the Second World War or perish with it.
The Old Man & The Robot
In a post-apocalyptic future, an aging man struggles to survive alone on a desolate Earth. As his food supply dwindles, he realizes his time is running out. One day, while scavenging in the wasteland, he stumbles upon a broken, malfunctioning robot. Against the odds, the two form an unlikely bond and work together to find a way to survive in this harsh, unforgiving world.
Remi's Jungle
After unknowingly revealing the location of an ancient rainforest to a ruthless logging tycoon, park ranger Remi is betrayed and left for dead. Saved by a mystical jungle spirit, he is reborn as a tiger, the forest's new guardian, forced to navigate the wild and witness the destruction caused by human greed. Now Remi must embrace his new form and fight to protect the land he once endangered, seeking redemption in the battle for the jungle's survival.
Thursday 7 August 2025, 7.30pm
Jammed
Two strangers in a laundromat find themselves drawn together after a man beats up a faulty dryer.
Name Me Lawand
Lawand is a young Kurdish boy, deaf since birth. After a treacherous journey and a year in Dunkirk refugee camp (France), the help of a deaf volunteer brings his family to Derby (England), where Lawand joins the Royal School for the Deaf. As he grows older, the film follows his dramatic progress learning British Sign Language (BSL) revealing a bright, charismatic, and inquisitive boy who discovers friendship and a new way to express himself.
Friday 8 August 2025, 7.30pm
Nova-Vita
An elderly woman meets a familiar face of a loved one at a cafe, where he offers her a chance to reclaim lost time and rediscover a life she once cherished if she dares to embrace a second beginning.
I Am Kelefe
In Kuala Lumpur, actress Liu Zhu dreams of stardom but faces setbacks as she gains weight, reducing her to minor roles. Living with her best friends, Meijing and Xiaozhen, she refuses to compromise her values in the harsh entertainment industry. She secretly admires Ajin, a photographer who silently supports her. After a serious injury, she questions her dreams until a young girl's love for her mother inspires her. A heartbreaking dream reminds her of the importance of family. With renewed determination, she returns home, reconciles with loved ones, and later finds success. Hand in hand, the three friends embrace their future.
Saturday 9 August 2025, 7.30pm
Being Ohnmar
After the 2021 military coup in Myanmar, 34-year-old Ohnmar plans to leave the country with her fiancé. However, her plans are complicated by the difficult decision to place her sick mother in a nursing home. Struggling to talk openly with her mother, every conversation leaves Ohnmar overwhelmed with guilt and unresolved emotions. When her mother discovers her intentions, Ohnmar must make a choice between her personal escape and family responsibility.
Way Back Home
Two brothers from different mothers who have long been at odds are united by a journey that drains emotions and energy for the purpose of finding the father who has long been missing from their lives.
Sunday 10 August 2025, 7pm
Awards Night
The KKIFF is not only about the screening of amazing independent films. Since 2009, the festival has been committed to supporting emerging filmmakers in the region and training young people for careers in the film industry. The Awards Night celebrates this mission.
Throughout the festival, local and international filmmakers with hands-on experience lead training sessions and film labs designed to nurture new talent and fresh perspectives. The awards presented on the night recognise the outstanding work of students who have participated in these sessions.
The Awards Night will be held at Hilton Kota Kinabalu, in the Grand Ballroom.
Free and open to all.
Organiser & Venue
Venue City Cineplex
2nd Floor, City Mall Shopping Centre, Jalan Lintas, 88300 Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia.
Organiser
Kota Kinabalu International Film Festival
